


To all the boys I've loved before

by Beeexx



Category: 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Boys In Love, Drinking, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, High School, M/M, Parties, Sharing a Bed, Sharing a Room, Strangers to Lovers, ski trip
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:21:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 43,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27896722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beeexx/pseuds/Beeexx
Summary: TK writes love letters to all his past crushes, these are letters just for him and he has no intention of ever sending them off. Until one day the thing that can't happen does and somehow TK ends up kind of dating Carlos Reyes, star football player, cool, hot and way out of TK's league. His life takes a sudden turn and it will be a year he won't forget anytime soon.But this is high school, and it's fun and messy and heartbreaking and all over the place all at once, so TK's up for a ride for sure, and he isn't sure it's just the good kind.The To all the boys I've loved before Tarlos au no one asked for but I wrote anyway,
Relationships: Carlos Reyes/TK Strand
Comments: 25
Kudos: 41





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yep, my brain turned up with this and while it is one of my favourite rom coms and I always watch it when I am feeling down, I've had a bad week so yep this is what I chose to do eheh.
> 
> Some notes:  
> -I've changed the age of everyone to 18/19 because I didn't feel comfortable writing them any younger than that.  
> -Mateo is TK's adoptive brother in this as Owen adopted him as a child. It will make sense in the story as it goes along.  
> -Some of the things are directly taken from the film and some things I made up myself and I've had to change the dynamic of the whole show with this, but it was honestly a lot of fun and somehow worked together really well.
> 
> Enjoy!

When Mateo saunters into TK’s room he’s too busy daydreaming to notice it. His walls are full of posters, his desk is overflowing with notebooks and pencils, full of drawings and doodles, clothes are spilling onto the floor everywhere and his bookcase is overfull of everything from trashy romance novels to complex sci fi stories. TK’s at the moment too wrapped up in his own fantasies about hand holding with someone cute and sweet, forbidden kisses and sneaking out at night together to notice anything out of the ordinary. He’s been staring at the same page for a while, he’s read the novel a few times by now, instead he has a distant look in his eyes as he lies on his side, staring into the wall. Mateo rolls his eyes and grabs the nearest pillow and whacks it, hard, straight into TK’s face. 

“Hey!” TK almost falls off the bed, Mateo laughing as he leans against the wall, looking way too proud over his achievement. 

“Are we hanging out or what?” 

“Oh right, yeah I forgot.” He throws a mournful look at his book that has fallen to the floor, picks it up and dusts it off before he gets off the bed. 

“You need to stop living inside your head so much. It’s not good for you.”

“Shut up.” 

“What? It’s true, you need to start living your life.”

“Sure Dr. Phil, I’ll get right onto it.” Mateo laughs and shrugs, like he knows it’s a losing battle, and then they are both interrupted by the clattering of plates downstairs. Mateo lifts an eyebrow.

“Yeah, we should probably go help him.” TK agrees. 

“He doesn’t want the help though.”

“Well, we can set the table.” TK caringly puts his book on the nightstand and then they head downstairs to see if their dad is about to burn the whole house down, which would be ironic since he’s ridiculously thorough when it comes to fire safety. 

“Hi, dad, don’t burn the house down please.” TK calls and Mateo glares at him.

“What?”

“Don’t say that, it will hurt his feelings.”

“No, it won’t.”

Owen Strand, fire captain, father of two, and an altogether good person was standing in their infrequently used kitchen, oven mitts on and way on his way to almost drop the big metallic bowl he’s holding as they make their way downstairs. 

“Dad, how’s it going, do you want any help?” Mateo asks, and then gives TK a look over his shoulder that says ‘this is how it’s done’ like he thinks TK doesn’t know how to be discreet, which is a lie, TK definitely knows how to be discreet. There’s a knock on their door then and before anyone can even open it Paul and Marjan step inside, like they both live here and have done this numerous times before. 

“Hi, fire captain, it smells good.” Paul calls as he steps inside to high five Owen, who delightfully accepts, only to actually drop the bowl on Mateo’s toes. TK snickers meanly into his hands as Mateo jumps up and down, like that will somehow ease the pain. Marjan rolls her eyes but bends down to pick it up, luckily it was empty. 

“Thanks Paul.” Owen says proudly and takes the bowl off Marjan, who looks at Owen like he’s hung the moon. TK loves his friends, but Marjan and Paul are both clearly too dumb to be able to see Owen for who he really is, even if TK were to dangle the mess his father can be in front of their eyes. They love his dad, absolutely adore him and when they come around to hang out, TK and Mateo can expect to be left on the sidelines while the pair relentlessly bother Owen with questions about being a fireman and listen like there’s nothing more interesting to do in life than hear Owen’s stories. TK isn’t too bothered by it, but it bugs Mateo, so TK has taken to intervening from time to time and force his dad to leave the room so they can actually hang out like planned. 

They come over on Saturdays though, every Saturday since they’ve all been friends, and that day is reserved for only listening to Owen talking about being a firefighter, that’s the standing deal they all have. Mateo and TK have given up on trying to change that by now and most of those evenings usually ends with Mateo being the one to cook the actual dinner while TK tries to help and fails spectacularly. He’s a miniature of his dad in the kitchen for sure. 

There was a time when TK used to only refer to Owen as his dad, but since Mateo’s been around ever since TK was 6, Owen is just as much TK’s dad at this point as he is Mateo’s. And Owen is a good dad, in most areas, but not when it comes to cooking or being on time, so Mateo and TK gave up a long time ago trying to change his weird and unbreakable habits. They’ve spent enough time on their own by now to know it’s useless and they are old enough now both to care and to understand that being a fire captain is a serious and very time consuming job. They’ve spent enough time doing homework, and what they used to refer to as sleepovers at the station, which weren’t exactly sleepovers, more like their dad was working night shifts and he couldn’t get Michelle to cover all the time for him during the nights and they were too young to be left on their own, to understand that what their dad does is a very serious job. Michelle who used to babysit them pretty often when they were children are now working with Owen as a paramedic. She’s shown them around the van a few times too and both Mateo and TK are very taken by the whole station and the people working there, but more so Mateo these days than TK. 

Long cooked ribs are soon ready to be taken out of the oven, but TK has the chinese takeout place a ten minute drive down the road on speed dial for emergencies, and he knows his dad, this is going to end up being one.

“Paul, Marjan, how’s school? How are your parents?” While Owen has never been on time once in his life, apart from when he’s on call, he’s good at keeping up with all of TK and Mateo’s friends and their respective families though, and always asks and seems to genuinely care about any news. Owen is popular by default, and it’s not his fault he’s likeable by most people, but it does mean that TK and Mateo don’t get a lot of alone time with him, seeing as when he’s off work he gets pulled in all sorts of directions and he’s basically incapable of saying no. TK has definitely not inherited that quality though as his default answer to doing anything that requires him to spend time outside of this house and away from his precious books and characters is always going to be a no. More often than not Mateo is forced to push and pull him out of the house if he’s going to leave it for anything other than school, which he can’t exactly opt out of. 

“It’s good, and my parents send their hello.” Marjan says as TK tunes them out and turns to Mateo instead so he can be directed towards what he’s supposed to do. He starts to chop carrots up as his dad distractedly starts to hold a conversation with Marjan and Paul while Mateo takes the bowl off his dad completely and starts putting the mostly already cut up potatoes in there.

\-------

“It’s supposed to fall off the bone.” His dad whispers sadly as he tries to shake the meat off in an attempt to try and fix the situation. Paul and Marjan look about ready to protest and eat it anyway but TK refuses to risk anyone getting food poisoning and brings out his phone to order takeout while Mateo offers to help Owen clean up.

“It’s fine dad, I’ll just order some food, okay?” Owen looks disappointed but concedes to Mateo while Marjan and Paul try to cheer him up. TK rolls his eyes and dials. 

“It will be ready in 15 minutes.” They’ve done this enough times by now for TK to know everyone’s order by heart and Nigel, the owner of the place, is starting to feel more like a permanent friend of TK’s than someone he just goes to order food from. 

“Oh TK, Judd says his grandmother’s car is fixed up by the way and you can come pick it up at his this week.” TK groans and Mateo shouts out his displeasure.

“Why did TK get a car, he's a terrible driver.”

“I’m not, I just don’t like driving.” 

“You drive like a grandma, I would feel more safe in a car with an actual grandma than with you.”

“At least I have a driver’s license.” He shoots back.

“Yeah, I don’t even know how the driver’s instructor let you through.”

“Feel free to take the bus!”

“Or I can just drive and then we can switch places real quick if we get pulled over.”

“No!” Both TK and Owen shout and Mateo defleats, it sends a pang of guilt through TK though, because while they joke around about this Mateo is genuinely upset that he failed the driving test and TK didn’t which is a bit of an ironic situation because Mateo is a better driver than TK, he’s just really bad when he’s put under pressure and things tend to go wrong then. TK basically passed because he was driving so slow the instructor got so bored he didn’t want to do this with him again. 

“Boys, what I was suggesting was that all you go pick up the food and I stay here and clean up the place.” TK peeks through into the kitchen where Marjan and Paul have started looking through the fridge, the dishes everywhere and the surfaces all full of cutlery, dirty and clean alike looking very much in need of a cleaning. 

“Is TK driving?”

“Who else is going to?” Mateo looks at Paul and Marjan, which both are definitely out of the question and then at TK and just grimaces.

“Fine.”

“You don’t have to come, I can go on my own.” He crosses his arms, a little defensively, because while he isn’t the most comfortable driver, he is the only one out of his friends that actually can do it. 

“No, we’re coming.” Paul declares and Owen ushers them all to the door and hands TK the keys to his car with a reproachful look which makes TK promise that he will drive carefully.

“Be safe kiddos, and tell Nigel hi from me.” 

“Yes dad.” Mateo shouts, already out the door calling for shotgun and rushing up the car with Marjan hot on his heels. When it looks like Mateo is going to make it, Marjan manages to trip him and he falls head first into the car, but just as quickly as he’s hit the side of the door, which doesn’t look to be too painful, he moves to stand in front of Marjan anyway.

“I called it!”

“Kids, settle down.” Paul says, always one for joking around, but definitely more calmer than what either Marjan and Mateo are.

“I called it though.”

“Doesn’t matter, I reached it first.” Marjan says and moves her hands around Mateo’s body to lift him to the side.

“Hey! That is cheating.” Both Paul and TK roll their eyes.

“Because I am the one driving I get to decide who sits beside me, I pick Paul and if anyone objects I won’t pay for your food.” Mateo and Marjan both glare but they get into the back, not before Marjan pushes Mateo again who knocks his shoulder against hers back. TK rolls his eyes again, never fully having gotten on board with their sometimes overly aggressive way of showing affection. He much preferred Paul’s steady presence and occasionally unwanted wisdom and creepy observational skills he forced upon you. But they had all been friends for a long time now, Mateo and TK first, then it had grown into Paul and lastly Marjan who joined their group when they all started high school, for them to even have too many objections about each other by now. 

Once in the car another fight over who gets to decide the music starts and TK shuts them out and puts the radio on while they figure it out, it’s a ten minute drive, fifteen tops when TK drives, and it will take them about the same amount of time to figure out whose phone to connect anyway so he lets them be. 

“Mateo we listened to yours the other day, it’s definitely my turn.”

“No one wants to hear your emo music about sadness and feelings, it’s bullshit!”

“Shut up, my music taste is great.” Marjan whacks him on the head and Paul sighs before he turns around to whack both of them.

“Shut up, I am deciding.”

“How come it’s always you and TK against me and Marjan?”

“Pftt, as if I am getting roped into your category.”

“It’s not even me and TK against you two, it’s me against the both of you knuckleheads.”

“I’m neutral, don’t even try and drag me into this.” TK protests and slows down at the speed bump in front of him. Then he turns right and then they get to the big crossing that leads into town. He slows and Mateo groans.

“This is going to take ages.”

“Shut up.”

“Man you could have totally gone now.” Paul complains and TK glares at the both of them before he turns right again, finally getting onto the main road. 

“No backseat driving.”

“Yeah yeah.” Mateo mutters. 

Ten minutes later, without any accidents, they get to the small family owned Chinese place. It was a popular place, beloved by the town, and almost always full of customers. But Nigel was a sweet man, always took the time to talk to people, and ever since Owen had saved most of the place from burning down many many years ago now, when a newbie was closing it down and forgot to turn off the stove, they were always given extra prawn crackers and spring rolls to go with their food. Or maybe it was because they were here way too often when Owen decided to try new recipes that Nigel knew them well enough to send extra food.

“I drove, I’m not going in.”

“Of course you’re going in, you have the money!” Marjan calls.

“Exactly. You two get to sit in the front seat, and TK has the money, I ain't moving.” 

“Ugh, fine.” He has no energy to argue and Paul just shrugs and gets out. Typical Paul.

“No one steal my seat while I’m gone.” He warns and Mateo and Marjan nods solmely, both aware that Paul could take on the both of them if he decided. 

“Come on, I’m hungry.” TK calls impateniely and Paul jogs to catch up. TK’s phone chimes with a text message and he opens it up, unaware of where he’s really going, doesn’t catch what Paul says and steps straight into what feels like a solid wall, his phone goes flying and so does the person’s takeout in front of him. Paul catches his arm before he also goes flying to the floor and TK looks up and is about to say that he’s sorry only to freeze up, his mouth probably hanging open in shock.

“TK.” Paul shakes his arm and TK almost stumbles again. “What’s wrong with you man?”

What is wrong is that TK is an absolute idiot and the person he just walked into and sent their take out orders and the drinks to the floor, is of bloody course Carlos Reyes. 

Carlos Reyes.

Not that he looks angry or anything, instead he looks something between amused and concerned and a bit like he’s waiting for TK to say anything.

“Erm…”

Paul faceplants and bends down to help pick up the stuff from the ground because TK seems to have broken down completely and Paul at least has some sense about him to act human. 

“It looks like most of it is fine, sorry man.” Paul says and Carlos’ eyes finally move away from TK, thank fuck, because he can breathe again and watches as Carlos smiles at Paul, sending something like jealousy and relief through him. God, what the fuck?

“Oh, yeah, thanks. That’s good.”

“What happened?” A girl says and TK’s eyes move away from Carlos’ to a girl he knows is called Iris, a jumper that has the The Alder high school’s symbol printed at the front in red bold letters, and a size that’s way too big on her to belong to her at all. TK wonders if it’s Carlos.

“Sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t see where I was going.” He finally says and her eyes snap to his, recognition sparking in them. She smiles, nicely, and grabs Carlos by the shoulder.

“I’m sorry, I’m sure it wasn’t all your fault. Carlos is a known clutz.” Carlos rolls his eyes and TK highly doubts that someone as athletic and fit as Carlos can be clumsy. He thankfully keeps his mouth shut though. Paul hands Carlos the bags and he smiles thankfully, his face stupidly handsome and TK gulps, he hopes it goes unnoticed.

“Sorry, sorry again.” He stutters out like an idiot and when Carlos looks at him and TK feels the air go out of him.

UGH.

“It’s cool, well we better get going, see you sometime.” He says, trying to sidestep TK who misreads the whole thing and steps to the right at the same time as Carlos does, making Carlos chuckle, before he tries again, only to almost step right into TK. Paul groans and then, not too gently, grabs TK’s shoulders to forcefully remove him from Carlos’ path like TK is at the moment incapable of doing it himself. Carlos chuckles again, a deep sound that vibrates through TK, before he waves and drags Iris with him, her eyes sparkling with mischief and before they cross the street TK hears Carlos shush her. TK groans and pulls at the ends of his hair and is met by Paul raising his eyebrow at him, both judginly and fondly at the same time.

“Don’t say a word.” He warns.

“I wasn’t.” Paul opens the door to the place so they can finally get inside, the place smelling wonderfully and the noise level comforting TK immediately. What can he say, he likes the sound of voices to fill empty spaces. 

“Your eyes are saying enough.”

“If they were they would be saying that that was pathetic.”

“Ugh.”

“How long has this crush been going on now? Since middle school?”

“Yeah.” TK lies, because he did meet Carlos ages ago, and he was possibly too young to have a crush then, but then yes, middle school was probably around the time he figured out he was into boys and Carlos was the best looking one he had ever laid eyes on and he was young and dramatic and couldn’t help but latch onto him. 

“He’s not so bad for a jock, you know that right?”

“It doesn’t matter.” The line moves further up ahead and it can’t go quick enough TK thinks. 

“Why?”

“Because! Because?” He ends. Pauls rolls his eyes. 

“Because? These are not reasons.”

“Okay, fine, fine! He’s popular, hot, clever, way out of my league, and, and…”

“These sound like excuses and not reasons.”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” He mutters petulantly and is saved by it being their turn, Nigel knowing exactly what they have ordered, smile bright and happy and TK gets busy answering all his questions instead of Paul’s, which he prefers anyway. 

He thanks and pays and before they get to the car TL grabs Paul’s arm.

“Not a word to Mateo and Marjan about this, okay?” 

“Why?”

“Not a word. Please.” Paul studies him and rolls his eyes before he nods and wrestles himself out of TK’s tight grip on his jumper. 

“Yeah, yeah, but I’m of the opinion that you should just get this crush out of your system.”

“Shut up.”

Paul laughs but zips his mouth shut and doesn’t mention the incident to anyone in the car and TK’s grateful for it. On the drive home he’s quiet, which isn’t unusual and no one pays him any attention and by the time everyone gets home they are all too busy being hungry to notice that TK is a little bit more distracted than usual. 

When Marjan and Paul leave for the evening, his dad and Mateo too busy watching TV, TK sneaks upstairs to his room. He opens up his wardrobe and starts rifling through his clothes to find the box he’s looking for. It’s an old shoebox that looks way too used to be of any actual functional use and probably belongs in the trash more than it belongs in his wardrobe full of clothes and his beloved sneakers, but he’s kept it for sentimental reasons. He opens it up, it was a while ago since he did it now and picks up the letters laying on top. He has written 4, 4 for each person he has had a crush on. These are not letters he’s ever planned to send out, they were for him and his eyes only, and he wrote them as a way of sorting through his feelings, so he could understand a bit more what was going on and how he was feeling. TK’s always been more taken with words and feelings when they are written down than he has ever been with verbal communication. So, when he doesn't know what to do he tends to write it all down into letters that he’s never going to send. Re reading them reminds him how powerful his emotions are, how all consuming his feelings are, and that there is nothing wrong with that. He’s kept it up for a long time and it’s a hard habit to shake.

Mateo would accuse him of being dramatic, but TK thinks there is power in being able to know how to express oneself in beautiful words, and besides, he thinks drama can be a little fun and thrilling, just as long as no one knows about it and it’s not about him.

“What are you doing?” Mateo calls and TK shuts the box quickly, hides it underneath some of the clothes laying on the floor as Mateo saunters in and drops himself down unceremoniously onto TK’s bed. 

“Your room’s a mess.” He comments unhelpfully. TK sighs but gets up to join Mateo, scooting closer to the headboard, while Mateo is one his side, looking distantly into the wall.

“Hey, are you okay?” TK whispers and Mateo’s lip twitches in an almost smile before he shrugs. 

“Yeah, yeah…”

“It doesn’t sound like you are.” Mateo sighs and then moves to copy TK’s position.

“Why is growing up hard? Life was so much easier when we were kids and all that mattered was what we were going to play that day.”

TK knows exactly what he means. 

TK has been lucky when it comes to being gay and growing up in this family. When he first came out when he was 13, his dad and Mateo threw him a coming out party with rainbow balloons and cake and while it was cheesy it had meant the world to TK that they didn’t care about it. Mateo and later Paul had always had TK’s back in school when kids would pick on him for liking to read rather than doing sports, and because he was quiet and liked to draw instead of playing fighting games on the playground. He was lucky, very lucky. 

When TK was 5, his mother was still around at this point, his dad had been out on a particularly gruesome night where an apartment building had burnt down to the ground and the casualties were many. Mateo’s family were one of the many, and he would have been turned over to foster care if Owen hadn’t taken such a strong liking to Mateo and vice versa that neither wanted to be separated from the other, even though Mateo was 5 and didn’t exactly know to use those exact words. So Owen had adopted and TK had lost a mother and gained a brother that year and while Mateo and him were very different, their bond between each other was strong. TK would have spent so much more of his childhood being alone if it wasn’t for Mateo.

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t any of your authors have any words of comfort?” TK snorts.

“It’s just a part of life, what’s really bugging you?”

“I don’t know, everything.”

“Dramatic, you sound like me.”

“Dad wants you to clean your room out and give some of the stuff to Goodwill.” TK looks around his room, doesn’t comment on Mateo changing the subject, and scrunches his face up.

“I don’t think there’s anything I can spare at the moment.” Mateo visibly rolls his eyes and picks up an old T shirt off the floor and holds it up.

“No!” TK grabs it off him.

“What? Why? It’s like falling apart.”

“No.” It’s an old fireman t-shirt from his dad that he has, he’s used it so much it’s barely functional for anything other than sleeping in, but he’s definitely not giving it away. 

“Fine, fine, but you should really clean your room.” He looks around in distaste and TK throws the shirt in his face making Mateo flail around, almost falling off the bed. TK snickers. Mateo’s phone chimes and he stops with throwing back a pillow in TK’s face, his face souring when he looks at the text.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.” TK doesn’t push.

“Okay, do you want to watch a film?”

“Yeah.” TK gets his laptop and puts on Clueless, a film they have watched countless times before but one they always go back to when things are going on in their lives that they don’t want to talk about. They have a system for this, has had for years after spending a lot of time alone in this house, sometimes being too scared to sleep alone in their own beds and they used to sneak into Owen’s bed and put on comedies until they fell asleep with the sound of laughter in the background.

TK will ask about it later though, what it is that’s bothering Mateo.

……..

On Sunday TK spends most of the day actually cleaning out his room, sorting through clothes and books and trinkets that he will either throw away or just donate to Goodwill as his dad so patiently reminds him over pancakes breakfast that morning, which happens to be one of the few things the man can actually make. 

The rest of the day he prepares for school to start back up on Monday after summer break and while he reads he watches amusedly as Mateo tries on 5 different outfits while freaking out over which one to choose.

“Just go with the black jeans.” Owen says and TK agrees. It just makes Mateo huff in annoyance while declaring that neither TK or Owen has any sense of personal style.

“If I cared I’d be offended.” Owen takes a sip of his coffee while TK turns a page and mutters.

“I agree with Mateo, you don’t know how to dress yourself if it isn’t in your work uniform and that doesn’t count.”

“Says the kid with ten different tracksuits.” Owen snarks while Mateo laughs and TK makes a wounded sound.

“Tracksuits are stylish.” He defends. “And I don’t wear those to school…”

“Only to the shops and on walks and inside the house every day.”

“Shut up. Also go with the black jeans you dork.”

“You’re a dork.” Mateo maturely counters with. “Wait, black jeans, you sure?”

“I’m sure.” He says without looking up.

“Hm, maybe you’re right.” Mateo goes back upstairs to his room and TK smugly changes the page and continues to ignore Owen’s eyes.

“Yes dad.” He says, long suffered but puts his book down.

“Should I be offended he listens to you and not to me?” He shrugs.

“I listen to you sometimes.”

“Fair enough, I’m going for a run, are you coming with me?” TK glares and Owen laughs.

“Fine fine, Mateo, are you coming for a run?”

“No, I’m busy.”

“Huh, my kids are too busy for me these days, when did that happen?”

“Since you became uncool.”

“Harsh kid.” Owen pats him on his cheek affectionately before TK is left blessedly alone and in silence for a couple of moments.

“Black, are you sure???!”

“Oh my God. Yes the black!”

So much so for a moment of quiet.

……

On Monday Owen refuses to go to work before he gets to take a photo of TK and Mateo in front of the house.

“Stop fussing, it’s tradition. I’ve done this every year since you started school.”

“It’s a tradition we should kill.” TK agrees.

“Now, stand closer together, smile. Ah perfect.” They drop the smiles immediately when he is done, Owen too busy staring happily at his phone while TK and Mateo sulk in silence. They had a fight over the shower this morning, TK ready to murder Mateo for taking so long and making him late, which set TK back 5 pages by his calculations for his book and he really wanted to finish his chapter, he hates having to stop reading before they end. So they’re not exactly not friendly, but they aren’t too friendly either this morning. Mateo looks at his phone, fingers typing away at a rapid speed and TK rolls his eyes.

“Goodbye kids, be safe, take care and see you later today.”

“Bye!” They call in unison and watch as their dad drives away, leaving TK and Mateo in silence with Judd’s grandmother’s car which he has fixed up really nicely. It’s an old Honda Civic and TK doesn’t care about cars, but Mateo has muttered about it being uncool while TK argued that it was still one of the most commonly driven cars in America so that spoke to its popularity and Mateo should just shut up, get his own driving license and quit being a snob.

Mateo had whacked him in the face and TK had kicked him in the chins. Then they had put it past them and moved on.

“No, we cannot on the first day of school listen to Folklore, I cannot take any more Taylor Swift.” Mateo roughly grabs TK’s phone out of his hands and unplugs it, only to plug his own one in making TK huff impatiently.

“Don’t you dare diss Taylor.”

“I’m not, I’m just choosing the music.”

TK has no energy to argue.

The drive to school is pain free though so the choice to let Mateo have his way was obviously the right one. Once they get to the parking lot Mateo barely has the time to spare him a look or a bye before he’s out of the car leaving TK on his own. TK feels a little hurt, not that he can’t do on his own without Mateo, it’s just that he isn’t exactly used to having to walk on his own, particularly not in a place so daunting as high school. He texts Paul and Marjan, but they are either cycling or taking the bus and hasn’t arrived yet so TK stares at the entrance before he squares his shoulders and walks inside. There's a massive red banner hanging when he gets inside with golden letters saying Welcome Back and people talking and running around each other, excited to be here. TK envies that feeling, not that he doesn’t have friends or anything, it’s just that he doesn’t have many, and he just doesn’t like high school very much. 

He makes his way towards his locker, sidesteps an overly excited freshman that sends him straight into the path of Alex, which he of course doesn’t see and walks straight into. 

“Watch where you’re going.” Alex glares, his gaze possibly softening somewhat when he sees who it actually is. “Oh it’s you.”

“Sorry.” He mutters. “And yep, just me.” He adds sarcastically, making Alex’s stare harden again.

Alex Parker.

They used to be friends, good friends back in the day actually but when Alex had gotten older he had decided that TK wasn’t cool enough for him anymore and his lack of popularity wasn’t good for his image so he had dropped him one day and barely spoken to him the next. Alex was also gay, had taken some longer time to come out than what TK had, and TK hadn’t forgotten that kiss they had shared just before high school in his room, hidden underneath the bed, and he’s pretty sure Alex hasn’t either, but they have never spoken about it again so.

“Nice shoes.” Alex says scornfully and TK looks down at his vintage Reebok shoes he found online.

“Thanks, they’re vintage, I found them on Etsy.” Alex rolls his eyes. 

“They’re cool though, not everyone can pull them off.” Pauls swoops in to save the day and Alex glares daggers at him as Paul puts his arm around TK, a little protectively, to level Alex with an equally scary look. 

“I mean I could pull anything off, it’s just that I prefer not wearing stuff other people have worn before me.”

TK is going to say something back, something a little sarcastic, or maybe just that Alex is contributing to the consumerist culture that is threatening to kill the planet and encourages people to spend money they might not even have, but the reply dies instantly on his lips when Carlos comes up, puts his arms around Alex and laughingly plants a kiss on Alex’s cheek, making him smile in what looks to be genuine.

“Hi babe.”

“Oh, hii.”

“How are you doing?”

“Good.”

“Good.”

Alex mockingly meets TK’s eyes, dares him to say anything and he freezes up because what the fuck? And also, no just actually what the fuck? Carlos is gay??????

“I was just complementing TK here on his shoes.” Carlos misses the insult and looks at the shoes and nods approvingly. “Come on I just saw someone we need to say hi to.” And then he maneuvers himself out of Carlos’ arms and kisses his cheek before he leaves all three of them in what is kind of an awkward silence. 

“He just stopped drinking caffeine for some diet, so he’s probably just in withdrawal or something.” Carlos excuses and TK gets air from somewhere because he actually replies.

“Are you sure he just doesn't have some chemical imbalance or something?”

“Right…” And he gives TK a look that he doesn’t know how to interpret before he says bye and hurries to catch up to Alex.

TK groans for so many reasons.  
“Ten points for A+ insults toward Alex. And a big fat Fail for flirting with Carlos.” Pauls adds unhelpfully and TK doesn’t even know how to begin unpacking everything that just happened. 

“Did you….I mean did you know Carlos was gay? Or maybe he’s bi? Or he could be pan, should I just say queer?” TK rambles and Paul rolls his eyes.

“Gay.”

“You knew?”

“Yes, I thought everyone knew.”

“What? It’s a thing!”

“Well, not exactly, it’s kind of just been common knowledge, him being on the football team and all.”

“Huh?”

“Mateo has a point, you need to stop living inside of your head so much.”

TK feels stupid he’s missed it honestly and because somehow his crush on a straight dude doesn’t feel so far fetched anymore. Weeelll, Carlos is now dating Alex, that presents itself with a whole set of new issues.

“Also I can’t believe he liked your failed attempts at talking better than he did your insults towards Alex.”

“Well, Alex is dick anyway, he’s stupid for even dating him.” He says petulantly, because yes Alex might be a dick and a drama queen, fitting for someone who is in the drama club and lives for acting, but Alex is also hot and can be nice when he chooses to be so TK isn’t totally surprised that they are a thing. 

“Agreed Alex is a dick, but they make a hot couple.” TK glares and Paul laughs as they make their way towards their lockers, Marjan finally catching up to them.

“Where’s Mateo?” She asks as a greeting, takes off her cycling helmet without messing up her hijab that’s in a pretty pink colour today, and stuffs it into her locker. TK opens his locker up, the wall full of photos of him and Mateo and Paul and Marjan, some doodles and quotes he likes and takes out his English literature books, one of the few classes in school he actually enjoys.

“I don’t know, he took off as soon as we got here, barely had the time to say hi.”

“Huh? Paul, what’s up with him?” Both him and Marjan look at him and Paul rolls his eyes.

“You want me to use my observational skills now, you always say it’s creepy and inappropriate.”

“It is when you use them on me, but now I am just curious.”

“I don’t know what’s up with him.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? You know everything.”

“Just ask him Marjan if you want to know.” She looks like that’s the most absurd thing she’s ever heard, and maybe it is, Mateo and Marjan aren’t exactly known for talking about feelings with each other.

“TK you ask him?”

“I did, he didn’t want to say so I didn’t push him.”

“Hm, something fishy is afoot.”

“Okay Sherlock Holmes.” TK closes his locker.

“I’m going to find out what it is.”

“You do that.” Paul takes out his math stuff and then they make their separate ways to class, Paul and Marjan to advanced math because they are actually clever and TK to his books and words. The class is held by Mr. Paterson and TK really likes him. He's soft spoken, good with his criticism and for being as old as he is, listens to his students and encourages their ideas, something TK loves. He sits at the back and alone as always, while this class is not so full of people he doesn’t get along with, he still isn’t exactly good at talking to people he doesn’t know.

When lunch rolls around he feels ridiculously uncomfortable though, everywhere he looks people are sitting with each other, while he stands alone with the tray in hand trying to find somewhere to sit. He sees Carlos and Alex sit close by each other’s sides, both of their crews mixing together, being loud and too cheerful for his tastes, sees Mateo there too for some strange fucking reason he can’t even begin to understand and decides then and there that the cafeteria is just not for him. On his way out he sends a text to Marjan and Paul asking where they are and then a bunch of passive aggressive question marks to Mateo and leaves. He walks into the library instead, finds an empty corner and feels a little left out when Marjan tells him they went to Subway, but ignores that part of it and picks up The Bell Jar to read in peace. 

When the day is over he offers Paul a ride home but he declines, saying he is going to stay for the chess club. It makes TK smile and Paul rolls his eyes without heat.

“Are the chess people into screwing over tables, you could introduce that kink to them.” Paul leaves and gives him the finger. TK laughs and waits for Mateo by the car and is close to just leaving him at school, without even texting that he’s left, and have him take the bus home alone. Finally, almost fifteen minutes later he shows up and TK crosses his arms, glaring at him. 

“Where have you’ve been?”

“With some friends.”

“And you couldn’t have texted?”

“It’s just ten minutes, relax.”

“It’s been almost 30, next time I’m letting you walk.” He gets into the car and pulls the door shut a little too aggressively, waiting for Mateo to get in too. TK sees him sigh but gets in with at least a somewhat apologetic look on his face.

“Sooo, your so called friends, those were the people you ran off to today then?”

“Yeah, got a problem or something?”

“No, nooo, of course not, since when do you hang out with Alex?”

“I don’t hang out with Alex, well not just Alex, there is Tim and Nancy too, Iris is nice. Carlos has some cool friends as well.”

“Oh, I see, we’re not cool enough for you now?”

“That’s not what I’m saying, stop being so childish. I’m just trying to branch out a bit, maybe you should try it too.”

“Oh yeah, sure why not, why don’t I start hanging out with Alex and the drama people, I love fake people.” Mateo rolls his eyes.

“Just drive.”

“It’s my pleasure.”

TK puts the car in reverse, doesn’t hear the whoa whoa whoa before he lightly hits something. He stops immediately.

“What the fuck TK?!” Mateo screams and TK’s heart stops when he sees who it is. 

“Oh my God TK, did you kill Carlos?!”

“Stop being dramatic, of course I didn’t kill him.” He snaps as he hurries outside after Mateo. The thought that he has killed Carlos does cross his mind because oh my god what if he has killed the guy?!

“Hi.” A very much alive Carlos says, only possibly looking a little disgruntled, but otherwise okay. 

“H-hi.” TK stutters as Mateo looks Carlos over, who seems to be just fine thank fuck.

“You know people usually look behind them before reversing, to, you know avoid killing others, it’s a thing.”

“Erm, yeah, yeah of course. I’m just a little uncomfortable behind the wheel. I might have forgotten to check my mirrors.”

“Yeah, clearly.”

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you, are you okay?”

“Yeah I’m fine, are you going to be able to make it out of the parking lot or?”

“Yeah, yeah I think we’re good.”

“Okay good.” Carlos smiles, no anger visible, he looks more like he’s actually teasing TK and it just makes TK want to sink straight through the ground, he’s flaming face so red he’s sure he looks like a lobster.

“So you should just erm go, we’re fine.” Mateo glares behind Carlos’ back but Carlos just chuckles.

“Whatever you say TK, we need to stop meeting like this though. I am starting to get scared you have something against me.” Mateo’s eyes widen and TK blushes harder.

“N-no, no, nothing against you. It was a mistake, it won’t happen again.”

“I believe that when I see it.” He jokes, but kindly then he smiles and waves and leaves Mateo staring at TK both accusingly and expectedly.

“You hit him before?”

“Shut up, get into the car.” He turns and leaves a sputtering Mateo on the street and when he gets into the car he hits his head against the steering wheel in frustration. 

“Answer the question TK!”

“He’s your new best friend, just ask him.”

“He’s not my best friend, don’t change the subject.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with you?” He accuses back and starts the car, making sure to look in his mirrors an extra time before he reverses out of the spot. Mateo sulks in silence and while TK tries calming his beating heart down so he can concentrate on not killing anyone else on the journey home.

For fuck’s sake, what a day….

When they get home Mateo angrily pushes the door closed, then angrily opens the front door and storms up the stairs without another world and TK sighs, not feeling like dealing with Mateo at all. Their dad won’t come home until way later tonight and TK doesn’t feel like spending time with an angry Mateo, so he leaves him upstairs and decides to occupy the kitchen until Mateo stops being moody and has to come downstairs for food. It will happen at some point.

A few hours later he might need to reassess that thought because he’s barely heard a sound from Mateo all afternoon and it’s almost 7 and TK is starting to get hungry. He sighs, but swallows his pride and ventures upstairs to face the music. He knocks a few times on Mateo’s door and when there is no reply he carefully opens the door, peeking inside.

“Hello.” Mateo grunts, TK spotting his silhouette on the bed, his back turned and hiding underneath the duvet.

Well fuck.

“Hi, are you okay?”

“Peachy perfect.”

“It doesn’t sound like it…”

“I’m fine.” Mateo snaps angrily and TK’s own anger flares, but he swallows it down, not wanting to continue with their pointless argument. Despite what Mateo thinks, he doesn’t actually like fighting with him. 

“Okay… well I’m sorry, I don’t want to fight, can we just forget about it?”

“Yeah sure whatever.” Mateo mutters and turns around, to glare, but with less anger than before so TK reads it as Mateo’s anger has deflated somewhat. 

“Can you just come downstairs and cook me some food, I am starving.”

Mateo glares again but then he just bursts out laughing, the absurdity of it all getting to him.

“Yeah, sure, why not?” He gets up and TK hides his winning smile by turning around and walking ahead of Mateo down the stairs. Mateo for all his faults is at least quick to let anger go and he’s never really been able to let TK go hungry for a longer period of time either. While Mateo makes chicken and vegetables in the oven, together with a salad, he sits on the kitchen counter and reads, making small talk with each other, with the TV on in the background. At 8 their dad comes home, looking happy but tired.

“It smells delicious Mateo.” He hugs Mateo and drops a kiss on TK's hair and then steals a carrot from the salad, Mateo swatting his fingers away.

“How was school boys?” Discreetly TK and Mateo look at each other and TK shrugs.

“Nothing special.” TK says and Mateo agrees, none of them mentioning their little argument from earlier. 

“No? Why do I doubt it, it’s senior year, it’s exciting.”

“Sure.” TK disagrees but Mateo perks up.

“It is. I’m very excited, there’s so many dope parties coming up this year.” He realises his mistake, both TK and Owen looking at Mateo’s reddening cheeks.

“Parties?”

“No, no, I mean, well I meant to say hangouts without parents but they basically constitute as parties, so yeaaaaahhh.”

“Well you’re both 18 so I have no say anyway, just make sure you bring TK with you when you go Mateo, God knows this child could use some socialising.”

“That’s what I keep telling him dad, it’s final year, it could be good to do some branching out, make some connections, kiss some girls…. and boys!” He adds last second. “Lose your virginity…” He blushes, because one of Mateo’s flaws is that he tends to blurt out every thought that comes into his head without thinking, and he keeps saying TK is bad at being discreet. 

“Get high? That also on your list?” Owen says sarcastically as he starts to set the table.

“No? No! Maybe, no, yes, possibly, nah you know what probably not.”

“So many emotions.” Mateo smacks at him with the spatula and TK jumps away. 

“No getting high, no throwing parties in this house, if you’re going to have sex be safe-” Mateo groans and TK puts his hands up to cover his ears. Owen rolls his eyes and waits for his children’s pathetic little tantrums to stop before continuing. “Always ask for consent, that’s very important. And have your friend’s backs, okay? Then the rest you’re free to explore, as long as you tell me about it.”

“Yeah yeah we know.” TK gets out the water from the fridge to bring to the table while Mateo carries the oven tray and puts it on a cover.

“Oh, also no one gets arrested. I will send Judd on you.”

“Got it dad!” TK loves Judd, him and Grace are practically family, but Judd can be scary when he wants to so TK isn’t taking any chances with that. “Also, Mateo is way more likely to get arrested than I am.”

“True.” Owen agrees. “Mateo, no getting arrested.”

“Hey!”

“You know it’s the truth, what am I gonna get arrested for?”

“Yeah true, the most exciting thing that happens in your life is when a new book you love gets released.”

“See you say that like it’s an insult and it’s going to hurt me, try harder.” Mateo opens his mouth but Owen puts a stop to it before it turns into an argument with people storming away, he knows his kids.

“Let’s eat!”

They sit down without argument and Owen asks about their day without getting much more details, other than TK is really happy with english literature and Mateo still hasn’t decided what subject in school he even likes.

“We got a call today, it wasn’t very serious, but someone over on Belmont View fell asleep having left the stove on, a too common thing these days. It was the neighbor that called, she was 11. Anyway my point is really that it was Lola Reyes, doesn’t her older brother go to your school?” Mateo bursts out laughing and TK almost chokes on his food leaving Owen in absolute shock for a moment and a look of complete obliviousness, not understanding how this could have sparked this sort of reaction.

“Oh my god, TK can you imagine if you had actually killed Carlos today.”

“Mateo?”

“Shut up!” TK clears his throat and wipes at his eyes, his cheeks a dark shade of red. 

“What is going on?”

“TK almost killed Carlos today in the parking lot.”

“I did no! Stop being dramatic, I barely scraped him.”

“You hit someone with your car?”

“I didn’t, I didn’t dad. I almost did, me and Mateo were fighting and I got distracted and almost reversed into him, he was fine. He was! He said he was.”

“Oh my God.” Owen puts his head in his hands and TK lowers his head in shame, coming up with ten different and creative ways he can murder Mateo.

“What have we said about fighting and driving, it’s not a good combination.”

“It was an accident and it was fine.” He defends and Owen nods.

“I believe you, I believe you. You got lucky.”

“Well technically Carlos got lucky.” Mateo pipes up and TK throws a tomato at him, it lands in the middle of his forehead before it slowly slides down and ends up on his shirt, Mateo shrieking in shock and TK getting ready to throw another one at him. 

“TK! Mateo! Both of you stop.” Owen says, calm, but with enough force that both the kids stop moving.

“Okay, so no one thought about mentioning the almost accident when I asked if anything happened at school.”

“Can we talk about anything other than Carlos Reyes, I have had enough of him for a lifetime.” Both Owen and Mateo raise an eyebrow, give each other similar looks before they look at TK. TK groans, wishes he had kept his mouth shut.

“Is this one of those evenings that requires me to get out the chocolate ice cream?”

“No, no, stop. Don’t be silly, and I don’t even like chocolate ice cream.”

“I meant it more like a saying, but I can get Oreo if you want that too.”

“No dad, I don’t want ice cream, what I want is to not talk about this anymore.” Owen shakes his head but gives up.

“Okay, no more talks about boys or school, should we talk about girls?”

“No!” Both children snap and Owen snickers and gets up from the table, bringing his plate and glass to the dishwasher. TK pokes at the last bits of food before he also gets up too.

“So, is jeopardy on tonight, or?” Owen asks.

And that ends the whole conversation. TK is thankful. 

…….

The rest of the week stays beautifully Carlos free, Mateo and TK don’t fight or argue which is kind of unusual for them, Marjan is still on about her mission to figure out what Mateo is hiding, even though TK tries to actually tell her it’s nothing, Paul talks about a girl he met at chess club called Lilly and TK and Marjan cheer him on endlessly for it, both of them happy for him even though he insists they are just friendly, and Mateo spends most lunches with them, just like it used to be.

On Friday evening TK and Mateo watch Dirty Dancing and eat popcorn, their dad as usual, not home.

“TK.”

“Mm.”

Mateo doesn’t say anything else and TK tears his eyes away from the screen, finds Mateo already looking at him and throws popcorn in his face to get him to talk.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Mateo turns around and TK rolls his eyes and throws more popcorn at him.

“No, what is it?” He pushes and Mateo sighs but turns back around and shrugs.

“Sometimes I worry you are going to turn into a hermit.” TK opens and closes his mouth in surprise.

“Was that supposed to be an insult or not?”

“It’s not an insult, it’s genuine worry that I have.”

“That I’m going to end up alone?” He jokes but Mateo doesn’t laugh.

“Yeah, yeah actually.” TK frowns.

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Well, it feels like it. I just… I don’t know I feel like you’re lonely and I’m scared you’re limiting yourself to meeting people. This is high school, it’s supposed to be fun, you’re supposed to be at parties and meet boys and break some hearts.”

“Where is this coming from?”

“I don’t know, I’m just thinking that’s all. And you’re great, you’re really awesome and I just think it’s sad that I had plans today but I chose to cancel them because I didn’t want you to spend the evening on your own.” That’s actually a little shocking to TK and he kind of wants to ask what other plans that Mateo has but knows that’s not really what Mateo is trying to get across. 

“That’s harsh Mateo.”

“Maybe, but it’s true.”

“I’m fine, I am fine I promise. And not everything in life is about hooking up with people.”

“No, but some part of it is, and you’re hot and cool so I don’t see why you’re not out doing it.”

“I don’t want a boyfriend.”

“I didn’t say anything about a boyfriend, but it's interesting that your brain went there.” Mateo smirks and TK’s eyes widen.

“Shut up.” He sinks further into the couch and hides into a pillow while Mateo laughs at him. 

“You know Carlos is actually single -”

“Shut the fuck up!” He whacks the pillow into Mateo’s laughing face who grabs it but doesn’t throw it back, instead he lies down again and continues watching the film like nothing has happened. TK glares at him but when Mateo doesn’t say anything else he drops it. A few hours later he’s fallen asleep, his dad waking him when he gets home around 1am and TK doesn’t brush his teeth and falls straight into bed and is out as soon as his head hits the pillow, with little knowledge that Mateo’s been snooping around his room, not 30 minutes earlier. 

…….

A week later TK and Marjan have PE together where they have been forced to run around the track for some stupid reason that makes no sense. TK hates running and he hates PE and he thinks it’s an unnecessary subject he’s forced to take, and he’s blessed with genes of quick metabolism so he really doesn’t need it anyways, not that he’s going to say that to his teacher but it’s the truth. But Marjan wants to become a firefighter so he runs with her because he’s a good friend, trying to keep at her pace.

“I saw the twist coming ages before it even happened, it was so obvious.” Marjan is talking about some TV show and TK barely listens, too busy trying not to die to pay too much attention to what she’s saying. 

“Hey! Hey, can I talk to you.” Someone calls from behind them and starts to jog to keep up when TK and Marjan obliviously ignore him. 

“Hey, TK!” TK turns around and almost trips as fucking Carlos Reyes is running to keep up with him.

“Eh me?”

“Yeah.” He says pointedly and TK comes to a stop, Marjan looking annoyed at having to stop the pace she had set and gives Carlos a look like she’s never seen him before.

“Reyes.”

“Marwani.” He says back, not exactly friendly, but not really friendly either. 

“Have you taken up running without your football uniform now too? Very much living up to the jock stereotype man, I feel that’s a new low even for you.” TL glares at her to shut up because that’s rude and also gives her a look of ‘what the fuck’ since when are you ever rude?

“Funny.” he bites back. “I need to talk to TK… Alone.” He adds when she makes no indication of moving. She sends him a look that says ‘are you going to be okay?’ or at least that’s how TK reads it and he nods that he will be fine.

“Okay, shout if you need me.” She teases before she takes off running again, much quicker than she was before, maybe it was her keeping at TK’s speed then after all. So, TK is now left alone with Carlos and that hasn’t happened in so long that TK doesn’t exactly know what to do.

“Look, I just wanted to say, I mean while I really appreciate it, it’s never going to happen.” He’s awkward and TK is dumbstruck because he doesn’t understand what is happening at the moment. Is he dreaming?

“I’m sorry, what?” He needs to ask because he can’t keep up with the words coming out of Carlos’ mouth.

“I mean I liked being friends and all that when we were kids it was cool, and for the record I liked the part about me having golden specks in my eyes. That was very beautifully written….”

TK wants to laugh, because what? But then his eyes find the letter in Carlos’ hand, faded brown and pulled at edges with a handwriting he recognises all too clearly as his own. For a moment all TK can hear is the rush of blood in his ears and the frantic beating of his heart.

No, no no no no nono no noooo.

“It’s just that me and Alex are in a really weird place right now and I don’t think this is the right time…” TK doesn’t hear, or if he does he doesn’t understand because the next thing he knows the ground gives away and he falls to the pavement. 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! TK!”

“TK, wake up. HEY!” TK comes back to it almost immediately and tries to focus his eyes but all he can see is the very blurry image of Carlos brown eyes and concerned face in front of him making it even harder to focus. 

“Hey, you okay?” There’s an edge of concern in his voice now and TK groans but nods.

“What happened?”

“You fainted.”

“Oh, okay.” He closes his eyes again and wishes it was possible for the ground to swallow him whole.

“Here, let me help you. Give me your hand, and the other.” He gently grabs TK’s hand and slowly pulls him into a sitting position, TK still a little unsteady and everything kind of feeling like it’s still spinning. He really hopes he doesn’t throw up. 

“There you go.”

“Do you want me to call someone, get you some water?” TL smiles, despite himself, because TK sounds concerned even though he shouldn’t because TK is obviously the idiot here and shakes his head.

“No, no, I’m okay.”

“You sure?” 

TK is going to say yes, but there are some people gathered around now, one of them Alex, who looks at them with contempt and anger and possibly jealousy in his eyes and TK’s suddenly struck by the need for payback after getting ditched for no reason all those years ago and Alex’s constant ribbing and teasing when all TK’s ever done is stay out of his way. At the back of his mind he does remember being told something like Carlos actually being single. 

“Oh my God.” He whispers before he’s even done what he’s about to do. Alex starts walking closer and TK foolishly throws caution to the wind and pulls Carlos down on the ground, who goes willingly for the record, and kisses him hard on the mouth, Carlos arms flailing around for a little bit before they stop moving and end up resting on TK’s side. Only TK doesn’t have time to really think about that, not about how closely pressed together they are, or how wonderful Carlos smells up close, or really much about how the kiss even feels because before it’s really even begun it’s also over. TK realises what he’s done, freezes up completely, spots Alex looking shocked which doesn’t thrill him as much as he had hoped for and then quickly puts a little bit of distance between himself and Carlos who is looking much more surprised than what TK thought he would look. 

“HEY STRAND. Stop that. Two more laps!” The teacher shouts and TK nods, pats Carlos on his massive biceps and gets up on shaky feet.

“Thank you.” He runs off.

“Whoa, whoa, what?” He hears Carlos say but he’s already taken off, heart beating in his chest like he’s about to die and then he takes off running into the bathroom, away from everyone’s eyes and stares. When he gets there, he closes the door, and the realisation of what he’s just done is so strong now he wants to punch something really hard. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He mutters and paces the small cubicle trying to calm down.

“What the fuck?” There is so much to unpack suddenly and he doesn’t know where to begin. He’s stopped pacing though and sits down on the toilet, head between his knees trying to figure out how to breathe. There’s suddenly someone coughing and TK freezes.

“It’s just me.” Marjan says, more kindly than he’s ever heard her be with him. He opens the door. “Hi.”

“I take it you saw then?”

“I don’t think anyone on that track didn’t see, so Carlos, huh?”

“NO! No, no Carlos, ever, at all.”

“I mean it didn’t look like it.”

“Well it was a spur of the moment kind of thing.”

“He didn’t look like he minded it so much.”

“Shut up.” But TK peeks through his fingers at her and she smirks, leaning against the stall wall, running gear still on. 

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing….”

“Okay, we don’t have to talk about it then, should we talk about you dating Carlos instead?”

“That’s never going to happen.”

“Never say never.”

“Mateo thinks I should get a boyfriend.”

“A boyfriend? Pfft, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Boyfriends are not the solution to anything.”

“That’s what I said.” 

“Well you’re definitely right there, wait, wait, do you want a boyfriend?”

“I mean…” TK has to stop and actually think about it, because admittedly he hasn’t spent a lot of time even considering that option. “Would it be wrong if I did want one?” Marjan studies him for a moment.

“No, no, of course not.”

“Okay.”

“So, should we leave?”

“I am skipping the rest of the day, I need a moment to sort some things out.”

“Fair enough.” Marjan smiles and pulls him onto his feet before she walks him out of the bathroom and claps him encouraginly on the shoulder before she goes back to the lesson. The corridors, as TK walks out of the school, are blessedly empty and TK makes it all the way to his car without any incidents and he counts that as being lucky.

When he gets home he rushes up the stairs without looking back, his dad calling after him. He gets up the stairs and into his room at a record time, pulls his wardrobe door open and hears it slam against the wall as he starts throwing out his shoes and clothes alike trying to find the old shoe box with no luck. No, no, no, no, no!!

He rushes back down the stairs.

“Dad, have you seen an old brown shoe box?!”

“Whoa, whoa, no hi dad, why are you home so early today huh?”

“I really need to know where my shoe box is, it’s important!”

“I don’t know TK, maybe it went out with the Goodwill boxes?”

“The Goodwill boxes?” He asks, feeling faint as his dad nods. Oh no.

“No, no.” TK shakes his head.

“FUCK!” TK rushes up the stairs again and Owen looks at his kid like he’s grown a second head. He shakes his head though and continues with the crossword he was solving and chooses to wait TK out, just like with Mateo, it’s sometimes better to leave them on their own trying to figure things out, it’s for the better and he doesn’t want to get chewed on today. 

TK paces his room. Somehow the letter to Carlos has gotten out, how, he has no idea how? But it has and there really isn’t anything he can do about it other than just tell Carlos he meant nothing by it and he wrote it ages ago. As far as the kiss goes he can just play that off as momentary insanity from fainting, right? Yeah, that will totally work. It helps calming him down a little at least. The doorbell rings and TK hears his dad open it, can’t make out more than the faint murmuring of voices before his dad calls for him.

“TK, there’s someone at the door for you.” Oh no. TK cannot deal with talking to anyone else at the moment so he grabs his backpack and pushes his window open and sneaks out onto the slanting roof to escape. 

He walks carefully further down it and then grabs onto the waterpipe and uses both his arms and legs to get himself safely back onto the ground. He sneaks a backward glance, sees no one behind him and heads for his bike leaning against the wall of the garage. He gets up and cycles quietly away. He has a destination in mind and if he’s assumptions are right there is going to be someone, probably Carlos, at the door asking questions he doesn’t exactly have answers to. He gets to the Corner Café, a diner with 60s themes that hasn’t changed since probably before his dad’s time. But he likes the vibes of the place and they serve good affordable food and it’s a place he sometimes likes to go to for drawing or writing when he wants to get out of the house. And they have an amazing Oreo smoothie he adores, so all in all it’s a place after his own heart. He orders just a coke though from Joan this time around, remembers hearing somewhere that fizzy drinks are good for your stomach and slurps at it loudly, trying to figure out what to do now.

Or what not to do to be honest. He could just ignore everything, push it under the carpet and continue being invisible for the rest of the year anyway, just like he’s always been. Graduation isn’t that far off right? He could stay invisible till then, and then just get out of town and never look back, seems like a solid plan after all.

A little too aggressively he gets the plastic straw out of its packaging and takes a sip.

“Hey, TK.” 

Ah, for fuck’s sake TK thinks as he wips his head around, finds Carlos sitting a few chairs down waving a little awkwardly. TK gulps down the coke, and averts his eyes.

“Oh, anything for your friend?” Joan of course has to ask.

“He’s not with me.” TK chokes out.

“I’ll have a chocolate shake. Thanks.” Carlos says, smiles brilliantly at Joan who almost looks like she blushes.

“Sure.”

“Thanks.”

“Sooo, what you doing here?” TK asks because he’s an idiot and sometimes he definitely is a little too much like Mateo and can’t keep his mouth shut. 

“What do you mean? I’m just here to take down one of those massive chocolate shakes.”

“Cool.” But TK grimaces.

“You don’t like chocolate shakes?”

“Erm, well, I mean, no, no chocolate is disgusting.” Carlos’ eyes widen like it’s the most absurd thing he’s ever heard.

“I mean, chocolate is fine, I just don’t like it as a flavour, it tastes weird.” He says again, Carlos laughs though and looks like he’s considering that.

“Fair I guess...well I actually stopped by your house earlier and your dad said you might have gone here.” 

“Right…” Carlos barrels on though.

“Look I just want to be super clear, okay. Like I’m flattered, I really am but Alex and I, like just broke up so…”

“Are you trying to reject me right now?”

“Well yeah because it didn’t seem to really take the last time so…” Carlos says wryly, but he isn’t being mean and it’s somewhat of a relief and makes everything just feel less serious than what TK felt it was. 

“Carlos Reyes, I’m not trying to date you.” He assures him.

“Okay, well yeah, but your mouth is saying something but then your mouth said something different…”

“Eww, no, no, I mean…” Thankfully he’s interrupted by Joan giving Carlos his shake.

“Thanks….” He looks at her name tag. “Joan.” And this time Joan blushes for real and gives TK a pointed look when she moves to the other side of the counter again that TK ignores, because no way.

“Okay, okay, so here’s the thing, I don’t actually like you, just so you know.” TK just wants to clear everything up and leave, so the both of them can just forget that it happened at all.

“I mean sure, but that’s kind of not what you made it seem like, both in your letter and with the kissing and also might I add with the whole almost killing me thing you got going. It’s all a little kindergarten for me.”

“Oh my God.” TK blushes and looks away. “Can’t we just forget about everything?”

“Maybe?”

“Maybe?” TK looks back at Carlos who is grinning cheekily and TK glares.

“Look, I appreciate it, it was actually a nice kiss, considering, but as I said me and Alex -”

“Just broke up, yeah I heard you.” TK mutters and slurps loudly on the drink in front of him.

“Yeah…”

“Well in my defence I didn’t just write you a letter, yours is the only one I know made it to the person though.” That gets Carlos’ attention.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait, stop, I’m not the only one you wrote a letter to?”

TK shakes his head.

“Wow, you really think you’re special, then you find out he wrote love letters to two guys.”

“Actually I never said 2, I wrote 4 letters so don’t go feeling too special.”

“You wrote 4 love letters?!”

“Yeah…”

“Damn Strand you’re a player.”

“Thanks?”

“Who else did you write letters to?”

“If I tell you will you leave me alone?”

“Maybe.”

TK sighs.

“I wrote them ages ago okay? It’s not a big deal and more importantly no one was ever supposed to see them.”

“You’re stalling.” Carlos smiles. 

“Lucas James.” 

“He’s straight.”

“Well, duh, doesn’t mean he’s not good looking.”

“Fair enough.”

“You, someone I went to summer camp with ages ago and an old friend who moved away.” He doesn’t tell Carlos that the last person was Alex because he definitely doesn’t need to know that. 

“Hmm okay.”

“So, are we good here? We’re good here right?” TK gets up, grabs his backpack and puts some money down on the counter for Joan.

“Yeah… yeah, we’re good.” Carlos says.

“Okay, good, good.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Is that bike out there at the back yours?”

“Mhmh.” Carlos kind of says it like it’s supposed to be something he’s ashamed of, only TK really isn’t so. When TK gives the ‘proud yeah’ answer Carlos seems to actually realise that the reaction he was maybe hoping for didn’t take, so he slowly nods his head, looking a little more intrigued, his eyes softening.

“Well, just let me give you a ride, okay?” TK considers it for a while and then just shrugs.

“Yeah, sure. Why not?”

Carlos’ so called car turns out to be a massive Jeep, ridiculously big in fact that TK feels small just sitting in the front of it. Carlos easily puts his bike in the trunk and the drive back home to TK doesn’t take longer than ten minutes and it isn’t as bad as TK thought it would be like. It surprises him somewhat. 

“Thanks for driving me.” He says when they come to a stop in front of his house.

“Yeah, no worries.”

“And for the record I am sorry for the whole jumping you thing and for almost killing you the other day and about the food....” He grimaces awkwardly and Carlos smiles.

“Don’t worry and it could have been worse, right?” He looks TK up and down and TK rolls his eyes to hide his beating heart.

“So, are you going to be okay? No jumping other people in the near future?” This time TK rolls his eyes.

“That really got to your ego, didn’t it?” Carlos chuckles.

“A little.”

“Well, thanks, anyway.” He gets out of the car, turns and smiles appreciatively at Carlos before he goes to retrieve his bike. He gets it out and walks it up to his door, not managing to get too far before someone grabs it gently.

“Hey, hey.”

“Hm?” TK turns and finds Carlos looking a little flustered but also like he’s had the best idea in his life. 

“I have an idea.”

“Okay, should I be worried?”

“So, what if we let people actually think we’re dating. Just for a little while.” TK’s eyes widen and he grips the steering of his bike tightly, he opens and closes his mouth a few times, because what????

“Erm what?”

“And I mean everyone.” He adds like TK didn’t get that was insinuated in the whole dating thing.

“Why would you want that?”

“Well for starters when Alex saw what happened he got super jealous. He went nuts. And if he thinks that you and I are a thing he will definitely want to get back together.”

“Ohhh, I see how it is, so you want to use me as a pawn.”

“Technically you used me first.” TK shuts his mouth, because even though he did do it to kind of get back at Alex, Carlos definitely doesn't have to know that. TK grimaces and rolls his eyes but gets on his bike to cycle the last bit of the path up to his door, Carlos calling after him.

“Look, you don’t have to give me an answer now, just think about it, okay?”

“Yep, don’t hold your breath.”

He leaves the cycle leaning against the wall and unlocks the door without looking back at Carlos, feeling much like this day is turning out to be absolutely unreal. He leans against the door as soon as it’s closed and lets out a breath, lets his bag fall to the floor and wishes he could go back a week and change the insane couple of days he’s had.

“What the fuck?!” TK flinches at the loudness of Mateo’s voice and hits his head against the wall. Mateo is looking furious and TK thinks it’s completely unwarranted that he’s the one looking angry.

“What?”

“Don’t what me, does the whole school know you’re dating Carlos except for me?” The reply dies on TK’s tongue because if he says that he and Carlos are dating Mateo will leave him alone and he’s been overbearing recently and TK just can’t begin to even deal with him tonight.

“I mean…” Mateo’s eyes widen and he drops his anger immediately, anger morphing into surprise then elevation.

“Oh my God? When did it happen?”

“It’s a recent thing, not too serious at the moment, just don’t be weird about it.”

“This is the best thing that has ever happened to me!” Mateo shouts and rushes forward to swoop TK up in his arms and crush him against him, TK grunts but pats Mateo’s back in what he hopes is a comfortable gesture rather than stressed. 

“Sure, sure.”

“I want all the details.”

“Erm, it just happened I guess after the almost accident.” Mateo squeals.

“Oh my god that’s so romantic.”

“Sure.” 

Mateo starts babbling at a rapid speed and TK nods and hmms at all the right places hoping Mateo doesn’t notice that TK is definitely not listening. He’s thinking that maybe, just maybe Carlos has a point, this fake dating thing could work in his favour and it would give him some breathing space from Mateo, piss Alex off a little in the process and kind of be allowed to hang out with Carlos who is hot and popular and cool, something TK defintiely isn’t, it might not be too bad after all. Carlos might be a bit of a jock and that’s not exactly TK’s type, but maybe, just maybe it could work in his favour too.

TK goes to bed that night with a plan.

……

The next day TK stands at the football pitch, watching the team practice. He’s been here for ten minutes already because he’s a little nervous and he’s been going over what to say a million times so he doesn’t stumble when he has to talk. When the whistle blows, indicating that practice is over TK starts to make his way towards where Carlos is standing by the goal post, unwrapping his wrapped wrist, walking briskly and what he hopes looks confident as the players on the pitch start to disperse. 

“Hey Carlos.” He calls, sounding way more confident than he feels. Carlos notices, smiles underneath the helmet as he takes it off and meets TK in the middle.

“What?”

“Let’s do this.” TK says ans Carlos’ face breaks out into a massive grin before he looks around and takes a step closer and before TK even knows what Carlos is doing he’s bent forward to quickly slot their mouths together. At the back of his throat TK makes a surprised noise before he even realises that his hand has come to rest on Carlos’ arm, he gently pushes him off. Carlos goes willingly and TK takes a step back, a little unsteady and finds that some of the players still on the pitch are looking at the both of them, caught between surprise and what he thinks is happiness. TK spins back around to Carlos and awkwardly looks an unaffected Carlos up and down.

“I’m going to trig, see you later?”

“See you.” Carlos smirks.

“Have a nice day.” He salutes Carlos because he’s an idiot and then shouts at the rest of the players around. “As you were.”

“Carry on.” He hears Carlos say as he leaves, flush high on his cheeks but also feeling like he made the right choice in choosing to do this.

……

After lunch he meets Carlos outside, on a bench hidden in the shade of beautiful cherry blossom trees, the late September temperatures still pleasant enough to sit outside. Carlos is out of his sport’s gear but is still wearing an Alder high school sweater which just adds even more to his jock-like appearance, and when TK looks closer at it he realises it’s the same one Iris was wearing a few weeks ago. TK refrains from rolling his eyes though. 

“So, first things first, we need to have a contract, so we’re on the same page about the rules.”

“You got rules? Come on, you really know how to zap the fun out of the situation.”

“You say this like you’re trying to insult me. And also it is important to know where you stand on certain issues.”

“Okay, like what?” Carlos smiles though and it’s a nice smile and it’s very distracting. TK looks down at his piece of paper. 

“Well, for example, I don’t think we should just kiss randomly anymore.” Carlos raises an eyebrow incredulously. 

“Are you crazy? Who’s going to believe we’re in a real relationship if we’re not allowed to kiss.”

“Okay, you might think yourself to be James Dean of this kind of stuff, but I have not had a boyfriend before and I don’t want all my firsts to be fake.”

“Okay, fine, stupid but fine.” TK rolls his eyes.

“If I am going to be making out with someone I want it to be real.”

“Everyone makes out in high school, does it really matter if it’s real or not?”

“No, that’s not what I was saying, I’m all for people making out, go nuts. I was talking about myself, at some point I want something real and true, and then I don’t want all my references to come out of something that was just pretend.”

“Okay, but you kissed me first.” He points out and TK blushes, wishes he would stop bringing it up.

“It’s non negotiable.” 

“Fine.” Carlos sighs dramatically and gets up to move across the table to stand up. He’s really tall TK thinks distractedly and shakes his head to stop his brain from going places.

“Okay, but we need to figure something out, this is high school, people are going to get suspicious.”

“Okay, you have a point. How about this, I’ll let you put your hand in my back pocket.” He says brazenly because it’s the best he can think of at the moment and it’s sure going to frustrate Carlos even more and that’s turning out to be something TK finds funny. 

“Hand in your backpocket?” Carlos asks clueless and TK laughs.

“Cheesy indeed, it reminds me of Sixteen Candles.”

“Sixteen Candles? The movie? Isn’t that so racist and sexist?”

“Very much so yes. Very problematic today, to be honest deeply problematic then as well, only I guess it just wasn’t recognized as such then or something. But the hand in pocket thing is the opening image so that’s where it came from. It used to be a couples thing I guess.”

“Yeah maybe in the 70s.”

“Sixteen Candles was actually the 80s, John Hughes, you’ve seen The Breakfast Club haven’t you?” Carlos shakes his head and TK’s eyes widen.

“What? I thought everyone had seen The Breakfast Club, it’s like when people say they haven’t seen Dirty Dancing.” Carlos just shrugs.

“Oh my God? Nothing? Okay, you know what I am adding Dirty Dancing to the contract, you have to see it with me, it’s a classic.”

“Sure.”

“Aaaand, we can never tell anyone this relationship is fake, it would be too humiliating for the both of us.”

“Duh, first rule of Fight Club.”

“Huh?”

“Are you serious? You’ve never seen Fight Club?”

“Well it’s on my Netflix cue, I have just never made it to actually putting it on.”

“Oh my God.” Carlos sits down excitedly, and motions for TK to write this down. “Okay, we’re doing a double feature, write this down. After we watch the Dancing movie we’re watching Fight Club.” TK does as Carlos says and makes sure to put it into the contract. 

“Anything else you want to add?”

“I could… I could write you notes every day.” He suggests quietly and TK’s eyes widen. 

“You’d do that?”

“Sure...I mean Alex was always on me to do that and I never did so if I start sending them to you he’ll be pissed.”

“How romantic.” TK jokes and Carlos chuckles.

“Also you have to come with me to my football games and to all the parties I go to.”

“Fine, then you have to pick me up and drive me to school, and my brother Mateo.”

“You have a brother?”

“Mateo yes, adoptive technically, but he’s my brother.”

“Oh, yeah, sure I had no idea.” TK smiles.

“I’m not surprised people don’t tend to know these things about me.”

“Well I can be oblivious and a little too focused on my own things but I wouldn’t go so far as to say you’re not noticed by people.”

“Huh?” TK asks confused and Carlos smiles cryptically.

“Nothing.” Carlos grabs the notebook off TK who huffs but lets him have it.

“Also, you’re coming with me on the ski trip.” He changes the subject and starts adding it to the contract, bold and big letters that take up most of the space, and his handwriting contrasting TK’s much neater one.

TK freezes, because the Adler ski trip was infamous for being the location where more students lost their virginity than Senior Week and prom combined. TK’s obviously never been and it’s not something he’s considered ever wanting to go on, but come to think of it, maybe he should widen his horizons as Mateo had put it. 

“That’s like three months from now though, do you really think we will be doing this then?”

“Let’s call it a contingency. And no one in their right mind is going to let their boyfriend go on that trip without them, so if we are still doing this by the time it comes around, you have to go with me.”

TK smiles ruefully because he’s convinced that when the ski trip comes around they will be ancient history and that’s the only reason he agrees.

“Okay, deal.” And so he signs the contract and slides it back over for Carlos to do the same who laughs but doesn’t object and much neater than he wrote Ski Trip puts his name down by TK’s.

“Tyler Kennedy?” TK flushes, he hates the name.

“Yeah, it’s my real name. I just don’t like it.”

“Huh? Why it’s a very nice name.” 

“Oh, thanks I guess.” He tries to hide his smile and waits for Carlos to be done and  
then TK holds his hand out and Carlos looks at him like he’s ridiculous but then he laughs endearingly instead and gently squeezes TK’s hand back.

They have a deal alright.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Helloo, back again with chapter 2, it should have gone up yesterday but I got distracted watching reality shows sooo, well whooops.
> 
> Enjoy it though and thanks to everyone who has been reading so far.

TK makes it as far as to his locker, his and Carlos’s contract safely tucked into a book of his in his backpack, when he runs into Paul. 

Ah, well fuck, he’s oficially screwed now. 

Paul’s eyes are narrowed and he has that very obvious ‘don’t you dare bullshit me’ look he’s gotten famous for in their group which they all know very well that lying is the worst thing you can do in that moment. TK sighs and motions for Paul to follow him to the bathrooms so they can talk privately. TK checks each stall to see if they are empty before he turns to a very impatient looking Paul staring at him.

“Okay, so I can explain.”

“Can you? Good, let’s go.”

“So what do you want to know?”

“How you went from ‘I’m never going to date Carlos I never want to see him again’ to locking lips with him where the whole school could see.” Paul imitates his voice and it’s way too high pitched to sound anything at all like TK does, but he ignores it. 

“I don’t think the whole school could see...”

“Most people videoed it.”

“Right, yeah… of course…” TK hadn’t even thought about that, well fuck, that’s not exactly something he’d want finding its way to the headmaster or to any future collage or university applications. 

“Sooo….?”

“Well the day when you went off to see Lily.”

“For the chess club.” Paul corrects and TK rolls his eyes because that is not true, no matter how hard he tries to convince him of that.

“Anyway I almost reversed into Carlos, he was fine by the way. Then Matteo has been on my ass about me being lonely and ending up some kind of hermit or something and how I should get a boyfriend. He’s been really annoying and then some stupid letters I wrote ages ago got out, probably because they accidentally ended up in the Goodwill boxes I sent out only for Carlos’ to actually get his.” He rushes through the first part of the story so he can just get to the part where him and Carlos are fake dating, because that is now a thing.

“And he was all like I’m flattered but Alex bla bla bla Alex bla bla so I just kissed him on the pitch because Alex was there and I wanted to get back at him and Carlos was annoying and I lost my mind there for a moment I think. Cut to me running away to Cafe Corner to be cornered by Carlos again and for him to actually suggest we fake date to make Alex jealous, so now I have a fake boyfriend and it’s Carlos…?” Paul’s eyes have widened, like he can’t believe a word he’s just heard and TK doesn’t blame him because it sounds absolutely deranged to his own ears too. Then Paul starts to laugh, a little too loudly and a little longer than what TK warrants to be necessary.

“Man, this sounds like one of those cheesy romance novels you keep reading. This is like straight out of a movie, I love it!”

“Yeah, yeah, I guess.”

“This is so going to end badly.”

“What? Why? How?”

“Ah TK, my sweet innocent child.” TK huffs as Paul grabs him by the shoulders to pull him close, holding on very tightly which makes it impossible for TK to shrug him off.

“It’s going to end with feelings and heartbreak.” TK scoffs.

“Feelings? What are you talking about? Feelings for who? Carlos? Are you kidding, it’s all just pretend.”

“Well in a few months’ time I might say I told you so and gloat a little bit, but I will obviously be the shoulder you can cry on when I am ultimately right.”

“I’m just helping him get back at Alex, I don’t see that as a particularly bad thing.”

“Oh I have no problem with you getting back at Alex, he’s an ass, he deserves it, all I’m saying is that these things never work out the way you intend them to.”

“Whatever, also you can’t tell Mateo and Marjan, it’s bad enough that you know, we put no snitching in the contract.” Paul bursts out laughing even harder and TK feels his cheeks flush, but whatever, having a contract for these things are important, he stands by that. 

“I won’t say a word.” He says through his laughter and TK finally manages to pull Paul off himself and leaves while giving him the finger, to the sound of Paul’s laughter ringing in his ears as the door closes. 

The rest of the day stays blissfully boring.

……

“Mateo come on!” TK shouts for what feels like the 100th time this morning and throws his hands up in defeat when there’s no reply. “Okay fuck it, you can walk.”

“No swearing TK.” Owen chides and TK gives him the finger when he isn’t looking.

“I’m coming!” Mateo shouts but TK still can’t hear him make a move from upstairs so that’s clearly a lie since he’s been saying that for the last ten minutes.

“You go on your own, I can just drive him once he’s ready.” Owen suggests.

“Actually… well actually I’m not driving today.” He says carefully.

“No?”

“No, Carlos is supposed to take the both of us.”

“Carlos? Carlos Reyes?”

“Yes, we’re I guess friends now…”

“Oh, that’s amazing, I’m happy to hear that.” His dad says overly excited for something as mundane as TK making friends, but the look on his dad’s face sends a pang of guilt through TK, he doesn’t want to lie to anyone, but then he really doesn’t want to have a conversation about how he has a pretend boyfriend to get back at Carlos’ ex that happens to be Alex either, so keeping his mouth shut about it seems logical and it doesn’t feel like his dad has to know about it just this exact moment so.

“Mhm.” He will leave Mateo though, because it’s becoming too much for TK to stand in the kitchen and lie right now.

“I’m here.” Mateo says, fucking finally done, and looking exactly the same as he does on any other school day so TK has no clue what the hell he’s been doing all morning.

“Finally!”

“Bye kids, have a good day.”

“You too.” Mateo calls as he closes and locks the door, just as Carlos drives up the road. 

“Oh, hell yes.” Mateo says excitedly as he sees Carlos’ car. TK thinks it is ridiculous and can’t help but wonder if Carlos is trying to compensate for the car in lack of certain things in other departments but he stops himself thinking along those lines immediately because nope, nope, nope no.

“Morning.” Carlos says smiling and makes sure to open the door for TK who rolls his eyes while Mateo swoons in the back.

“Stop being weird.” TK tells him and Mateo swats his hand away.

“I’m just trying to get used to the idea that you’re actually dating Carlos. EEEHH I am so happy for you.”

“Yeah totally.” TK tries to sound excited as well. Carlos gets back in the driving seat and starts the car. 

“Hi.” He says gently to TK and TK smiles and nudges him further away, Carlos chuckles delightedly. 

“Oh, here by the way TK, it’s from Grace.” Mateo says and throws something in TK’s lap, TK’s face lighting up immediately.

“Ahhh yes.”

“What’s that?” Carlos asks.

“Oh this? It’s chocolate from the Scandinavian store, it’s the best chocolate in town.” Carlos looks doubtful.

“It is! Here try some.” TK breaks off a small piece and gives it to Carlos who instead of just taking it off from TK leans his face close to TK’s fingers and very gently but purposely puts his mouth just at the tip of TK’s thumb and index finger and takes the chocolate off him, the tip of his tongue brushing against TK’s skin, sending shivers straight up his spine and making him blush ridiculously hard, Mateo wolf whistling in the back of the car. TK’s eyes snap to Carlos who is looking at him instead of at the road ahead and what he sees there makes him feel hot all over.

“Yeah, okay, wow it’s good.” Carlos is clearly impressed, his eyes lighting up, making his whole face glow in happiness, and TK breaks out of whatever the hell just happened and gulps and stares straight ahead in order to get his bearings together.

“Yeah it is.” Mateo says and for a moment TK had even forgotten that he was in the car.

“Where do you get it from?”

“It’s all the way across from town, TK is too scared to drive there himself but Grace and Judd live much closer to it and Grace is literally an angel so every now and then she goes to stock up for him.” TK tries to glare at Mateo for spilling his secrets, and giving away the location of the best supermarket ever, you can get so many nice things in those shops that you would never be able to get from the normal ones and TK is particular about keeping quiet about its location. 

“Who is Grace and Judd?”

“Our dad works with Judd and Grace is his wife, she’s a 911 operator.”

“Aahh, okay.” Carlos says and looks like that cleared something up he must have been very confused about. 

They make it to school much quicker than it normally would take when TK drives and Mateo is ecstatic, his whole face glowing in triumph when they step out to the parking lot, gaining some stares in the process that TK could really do without. Mateo hides his snickers.

“Morning.” Iris calls, comes up to punch Carlos’ shoulder, high fives Mateo and levels TK with a stare he doesn’t think is exactly hostile but not totally friendly either.

“Hi. Iris.” He takes her hand.

“Hi, TK.”

“Right, right, yes of course. I know who you are.” TK’s eyebrow raises because to her he’s probably the guy who made Carlos spill out their Chinese food just before summer ended.

“You’re Mateo’s brother, he’s told me about you.”

Oh, okay, that wasn’t exactly what he was expecting but he guesses he’s fine with that.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s right.”

“Sweet.” She leans against Carlos’ other side and puts an arm around Mateo’s shoulder, squeezing brotherly while Mateo looks like she’s hung the moon.

Oh no TK thinks.

“Iris, behave yourself.” Carlos scolds without heat.

“Me? I always behave. TK, if Carlos ever tells you that I was the one almost getting us arrested it’s a lie, remember that. It was totally him.”

“What? You almost got arrested?” Mateo pipes up by Iris’ side.

“Don’t go giving him any ideas Iris, I don’t want to bail him out.” TK says, a little sternly because he really doesn’t want to do that. Iris grins a little evilly, looking between the two, with Mateo giving her puppy eyes and TK trying to plead with her. 

“I think it’s a story for another time.” TK breathes out a sigh of relief and Carlos rolls his eyes at her. 

“Ignore her.” He whispers to TK and TK hopes he can. 

“Well, I have history, I kind of need to go…” TK says to Carlos, picking his phone up to double check the time, he hates being late.

“Yeah, sure, of course.”

“Come on Mateo, let’s go to chem.” Iris pulls Mateo with her and gives Carlos an unreadable look and sends him an encouraging smile as a parting gift, TK has no idea what their silent communication means, but they must know each other well if they can do it so easily.

“Okay, well I’ll see you at lunch, it’s a perfect opportunity for Alex to see.”

“Right, yeah, of course.” For a moment TK’s forgotten all about the whole making Alex jealous thing they got going but with Carlos’ reminder it’s suddenly very clear again that they are barely even friends. Come to think of it TK doesn’t even know that much about Carlos to begin with. He just nods and smiles and then picks up the pace to get to history and out of the vicinity of Carlos as fast as he can. He gets there on time, has already taken out his books when Marjan sits down beside him, out of breath and the air smelling like her perfume, jasmine and with a touch of tangerine, TK loves the smell. 

“Hi.” He says.

“Morning.” She takes out her books and opens her mouth to say something but gets interrupted by Hans, the teacher walking inside to start the lesson. TK doesn’t know what she was about to say but he’s sure it was about Carlos and he’s happy to have avoided that chat for as long as he can. 

Listening to Hans talk about the American Revolution is so boring, he could easily fall asleep right there, and he’s seen Hamilton too many times already to kind of have a grasp about what Hans is talking about. The first time he and Mateo saw the play, they both became a little crazed about it, and they did a deep history dive into what actually happened and a few weeks of pure obsession later, they could quote most of the lyrics to each other, driving Owen absolutely up the wall in the process. At least Hamilton triggered both Mateo and TK’s critical thinking somewhat and it’s been put to good use by them ever since. And TK is convinced that whatever Hans is talking about, a lot of it is probably a little too patriotic for TK’s tastes anyway so he’s happy to just sit and daydream instead.

Also Mateo and TK got 3 tickets to the Broadway show of Hamilton next year in New York by Owen because he couldn’t stand the quoting any longer and had bribed them into silence with the tickets which had obviously worked.

……

TK is nervous about lunch. Very nervous in fact and Carlos must notice because he gently places a hand on TK’s shoulder as they walk towards the cafeteria. 

“Do they always stare this much or is it just because I am here?” Carlos shrugs.

“They probably do under normal circumstances, I’ve just stopped noticing.”

“Very humble of you.” Carlos snorts.

“It’s either that or notice and let it get to your head. I choose to ignore it and go about my business like it’s any other day.”

“That makes sense I guess.”

“Come on.” Carlos gently tugs him forward and when they do get into the packed place, Carlos places his hand in TK’ backpocket, TK trying his hardest both not to squirm or blush. Some people stare and some don’t, so maybe it’s all more inside of TK’s head than it actually happens to be that people stare. But he’s used to being mostly invisible, and now when he suddenly wasn’t it was way more daunting than what he thought it would be. At some point Carlos stops and takes TK with him, placing one hand on his side while the other is digging through his pockets. He smiles secretly and gives the note to TK and leans in close.

“Good job.” He whispers as he hands the note to him, very visibly might he add and strokes some of his fringe back into place. TK’s mouth falls open and he quickly schools his features into what he hopes passes for a smile, ignoring the shudder going through him with Carlos this close and accepts the note, gulping nervously. 

“See you later.” Carlos smiles, brightly, before he takes off to go sit with Iris and Tim, leaving TK in the middle of the room, alone again. He can’t help but look towards Alex, who is staring at Carlos like he’s grown a second head, fury and jealousy mixing together on his face as he can’t seem to look away from where Carlos is sitting, now chatting and laughing like everything is normal. TK quickly averts his eyes, doesn’t feel like being on the receiving end of that and hurries to a table by the corner where Marjan and Paul sit, Paul grinning behind Marjan who looks angry and a little put off by the very sight of TK and Carlos together, and that’s kind of offensive to TK that Marjan would consider TK to be so out of Carlos’ league that she can’t see them as a couple. He sits down and unpacks his lunch while Paul loudly slurps his drink and Marjan looks suspiciously between the two.

“Okay, so does everyone know you’re a thing now, except me?”

“It’s recent.” He mumbles and once again feels ridiculously guilty for lying. 

“Yeah, I gathered, I’m just surprised you went from I’m never dating Carlos to actually suddenly doing it so.”

“Yeah I know…”

“And I think you can do better.” She finishes and takes a bite of her sandwich while Paul tries not to laugh.

“What is your problem with Carlos? You never actually did tell us.” Marjan stops, her mouth hanging open with her sandwich left unbitten into, and she rolls her eyes but flushes and then takes a bite, avoiding both their eyes.

“You noticed that?”

“I think everyone has noticed that, even Carlos.”

“Carlos can suck it.”

“Whoa dude, no talking like that about my boyfriend if you’re not going to tell us why.”

Marjan grumbles.

“Fine, he’s a cheater.”

“Like in relationships or?” Paul chimes in and Marjan rolls her eyes.

“No, in sports. In PE. He claims he won back in pre school when we were in the same class, while I clearly did win. He just couldn’t get on board with getting beat by a girl.” TK groans and Paul sighs loudly.

“Don’t you think it’s time to get over that?” He asks and Marjan rolls her eyes.

“Never...I mean good for you TK on dating Carlos and all that, but you still deserve better.”

Both TK and Paul give up, because it’s prime Marjan to hold a grudge, even years after it happened.

TK goes back to his lunch. 

……

One of the issues that comes with now dating Carlos is that suddenly people want to follow him on all his social medias. And while TK isn’t exactly embarrassed by his lack of followers or lack of amazingly edited and fake photos on Instagram, it still makes him feel a little uncomfortable with the amount of people suddenly noticing him. He puts his phone on silent, leaves it in his room so he doesn’t feel the constant need to check it all the time and goes downstairs to the kitchen to do one of the few things he likes to do when he really needs his brain to shut up.

Baking.

While TK will admit that he is useless in the kitchen when it comes to cooking he did take to it much easier when he was introduced to it in primary school. He’s no professional by any stretch of the imagination but he likes the creativeness of it all and because he gets to eat it all afterwards, something his massive sweet tooth is always happy about. The house is empty so TK makes sure to make good use of the vinyl player in the living room, putting on an old record of his dad and gets everything out on the counter, singing and dancing as he does, enjoying how good it feels to be a little ridiculous and move his body to the music. There might be only three of them in this house, but sometimes even this place feels too small to contain him, Mateo and his dad all at once, so getting the place to himself is a rarity he isn’t going to let go to waste.

The nervous energy buzzing underneath his skin slowly dissolves as he starts measuring cups of flour, some of it ending up on the counter, but TK just shrugs it off and continues while he moves to the music. When the doorbell goes off TK jumps and yanks his hand away from the bowl making some of the flour end up on his face, he sighs in annoyance from being dirturbed but goes to open. 

“Hi.” He says when he sees it’s Carlos who laughs out loud.

“Was I interrupting something?” TK looks down at himself, sweats on along with a flowery pink apron, and flour everywhere, hair unwashed and yes TK realises it must look like he’s having a nervous breakdown.

“You actually were, but I guess you can come inside.”

“Cool.”

He follows him inside, Carlos eyes going back and forth between the walls with photos of Mateo and TK at different ages, books and paintings hanging all over the walls seemingly very fascinated by everything as he follows TK into the kitchen.

“What are you making?”

“Cupcakes.” He goes back to stirring, feeling a little more distracted now though. 

“Oooh, I love cupcakes.” He puts his fingers into the bowl of berries and sugar TK has mixed together and scoops some out and into his mouth, smacking his lips loudly. 

“H-hey.” TK tries to move the bowl further away from Carlos’ long fingers but he’s taller than TK is and easily just leans forward to steal some more.

“MMM, this is really good.” He says. TK swats him away as Carlos laughs delightedly, like he thinks this is hilarious. 

“Thanks.” TK tries and goes back to baking but Carlos refuses to move so TK looks up which puts him very close to Carlos’ face, who smiles again, brown eyes full of mirth, making him look so handsome that TK forgets his own dang name for a moment.

“Here…” He begins, his hand coming up near TK’s face. “You have something, here, let me help you.” Very slowly his hand reaches for TK’s face and gently vipes off some of the flour on TK’s cheek, leaving a trailing blaze of fire on his skin. TK stutters, his eyes moving from Carlos’ face to his hand and when Carlos seems satisfied, he smiles again and finally takes a step back. TK’s thankful for the distance, because he’s forgotten what he’s even doing in the kitchen at the moment and he shakes his head trying to shake off Carlos lingering closeness and touch. His presence is so fucking intoxication, it’s ridiculous, TK really shouldn’t be this affected by him. Particularly because Carlos seems, well not to care what TK does in the slightest and it’s a little frustrating. 

“S-so, what are you doing here Carlos?” He clears his throat a few times to get rid of any lingering tension Carlos has left.

“What do you mean? I left you like 5 messages. We’re going to a party.”

“What? My phone’s in my room on silent, also a party? No, what?”

“Yes, well I texted you, it’s Greg’s party.”

“Well I’m not going to that.”

“Yeah you are, one, Alex is going to be there and two, parties are in the contract.”

“Sorry Carlos, I can’t.”

“A deal’s a deal.” Carlos counters with like it’s that simple.

“No, no I can’t-”

“Can’t what?” Owen interrupts, Mateo hot on his heels as they enter the kitchen, both of them sweaty from running together. “Oh my, is that Carlos Reyes?”

Carlos laughs delightedly, smile bright as he greets Owen.

“You’re as tall as me now, damn, long time no see.”

“It’s good to see you Mr. Strand.” Carlos, polite as ever says and Owen’s eyes light up.

Oh no TK thinks.

“Please, call me Owen.” Mateo is looking TK up and down judgingly like the way he is looking at the moment is somehow offending Mateo and TK glares back though just as heatedly. 

“I’m just here to pick TK up and take him to a friend’s party. I will get him home safely, no drinking for me, I am driving. Can we go?”

“Yes.” Owen says, like it’s the best news he’s heard all year, enthusiastic as his dad can only be. Carlos beams, TK is well aware that his dad’s happiness is contagious. 

“No.” TK counters with and Carlos hangs his head and looks disappointed.

“I can’t go, I need to do homework but more importantly I need to finish these cupcakes.”

“I will finish the cupcakes.” TK glares. “Okay, Mateo will finish the cupcakes and then you will get to eat them tomorrow and you can go have some fun with your new friend Carlos Reyes.”

“No, daaad.” He protests as Owen places both his hands on TK’s shoulder and starts to gently push him in the direction of the stairs, TK trying to dig his heels in. 

“Go get change and have some fun, you look like you’re having a mental breakdown.”

“Dad!” But Owen doesn’t give an inch, and TK stands no chance when his dad is in this mood.

“No drinking, no drugs and no hands.” He hears Owen tell Carlos and TK blushes, but hurries up the stairs, not wanting to be anywhere near the vicinity of that if he’s dad’s going to be in that mood.

TK sighs though as soon as he enters his room, because he has never really been to a party, or at least not this kind of party and especially not one where he’s expected to go as Carlos' boyfriend. He feels some unwanted pressure mixing together with anxiety about going out, making his stomach churn uncomfortably, it’s just not his scene at all.

He goes to take a shower first though because that’s the easiest step and it’s something he can do, and when he’s done with that he panic calls Mateo up for help. Mateo, instead of making fun of TK like he’s kind of expecting, takes the task at hand outrageously seriously for something that should be very simple and this is why TK loves him.

“Do you want to come?” TK asks because he would actually feel better having Mateo close, he’s way better at the whole socialising thing.

“No, I’m good. Maybe next time, and I feel you and Carlos need some alone time and I’m going over to Paul’s anyway to play some video games.” TK pouts.

“You’re playing without me?”

“Yep, so, okay clothes. You need to look hot, but not like you’re trying too hard. Hmm.” He almost trips over a stack of books on the floor but manages to right himself.

“You really need to sort this mess out.” He comments but doesn’t spend much time nagging TK about it right now, he has much more important business to tend to. He opens up the closet and starts humming to himself.

“Okay, yeah I know!” He takes out black jeans and white short sleeved button up that looks like it has black brushstrokes all across it. TK studies the clothes Mateo holds out and then just shrugs because yeah it’s not too bad.

“Okay.” He takes the clothes off Mateo who hums thoughtfully to himself before he takes out a silver watch, one of the few pieces of jewelry TK keeps and gives it to him. TK raises an eyebrow.

“It will look nice, also fix your hair and have fun!” Halfway out the door he stops. “Also, use protection.” TK blushes furiously. 

He puts on the clothes, fixes his hair, puts on some deodorant and perfume and chooses a pair of white New Balance trainers to go with and then he’s done and he feels ridiculous because TK rarely dresses up, not because he doesn’t mind it, well he does a little, but the whole prospect of dressing up on someone else’s behalf feels stupid.

He ignores the bigger part of his brain that tells him to stay home, to lay in bed to draw all evening and walks downstairs. Carlos must have been home to change because he’s in black jeans, a simple white T-shirt and a jeans jacket to go with, looking very casual, but somehow managing to pull it off like he’s a supermodel or something. He looks TK approvingly up and down a small smile playing at the corner of his lips and he stands up from the couch where he has been sitting with Owen, two cups of tea between them. Owen smiles encouragingly at TK before he ruffles his hair and tells him to be safe and text him when he’s home. TK swats him away and tries putting his hair back in place.

“You look nice, come on.” TK nods mutely, tries not to focus on what he thinks is a compliment and follows Carlos outside. The drive to Greg’s, who TK doesn’t actually know who it even is, takes them to the other side of town completely, the houses here luxurious and massive, at least one sports car parked by every entrance and the pavements wide and clean, few cars passing them on the way. 

“I don’t know Carlos.” He hesitates when Carlos parks.

“No, come on it will be fun.”

He gets out of the car and then opens TK’s door, leans against it and waits for TK to get out. He sighs but gets out too when Carlos starts to smile encouragingly. 

They walk up the stairs, together at least and TK can’t help but look around the hallway, dark wooden floor with a high ceiling, it’s honestly so high it’s a bit silly, with white panels along the walls and a chandelier hanging in the middle with a massive staircase leading upstairs. He can hear voices and loud music coming from somewhere inside the house. 

“This is a bit…”

“Much?”

“Yeah.” TK lowers his voice, not that there’s any chance he can be heard out here anyway. 

“Okay, let me take a photo.”

“What, why?” TK feels self conscious immediately.

“Because you look nice and I don’t have any photos of you and we need those to sell this.” Carlos whips out his phone and before TK can protest he’s already taken a photo, TK rolls his eyes but smiles despite himself and Carlos takes another one.

“See?” He shows the photo and it’s fine TK thinks.

“Fine.”

“Okay, give me your phone?”

“Why?”

“Would you trust me?” Carlos rolls his eyes and TK gives it to him, Carlos brings it up to his face, and TK hides a smile as he takes a selfie.

“Alright, you need to make this your new background.”

“What’s your new background?” 

“Ah come on TK, you know I already got it.” He shows his screen and the photo of TK taken just a minute ago is already set as his locked screen. TK rolls his eyes but makes the silly selfie of Carlos his new background too.

“I like this one.” Carlos says softly and TK looks up, Carlos nods towards his chest and TK looks down. On his shirt there is a little pride rainbow pin that he got from Mateo a few years back. TK has collected a few over the years that he pins to his clothes and bags but this is his favourite by far. 

“Yeah?” Carlos has an intense look in his eyes, almost like he wants to touch it but is too afraid to.

“You can touch it.” TK laughs and Carlos shakes his head, realising he must be acting a bit strange, but does, his finger sliding along the metal pin, clearly very taken by it.

“You can have it for the evening if you want? I got it from Mateo so I’d like to keep this one, but I can give you another one if you want? I have lots at home.”

“What really?”

“Yeah, sure, if you want?”

“I mean, well, y-yeah, sure.” It’s the first time TK’s seen something other than confidence radiating off Carlos and he immediately feels much more at ease seeing Carlos showing some actual human emotion, so he unhooks it from his shirt and reaches forward and hooks it into Carlo’s t-shirt, patting his chest lightly, letting his fingers linger for a moment before he removes them. He smiles at Carlos who looks a little shy but seems to really like the way the pin looks on him. TK feels happy for him too, that something so simple can make people feel such pride wearing them, being true to themselves, it’s beautiful. 

“Let’s go.” Carlos holds his hand out and TK shakes his head, protesting only a little when Carlos starts to drag him into the house.

As soon as they get inside to the open plan living room, it’s huge, Carlos starts saying hi to people, high fiving and shaking everyone’s hands, some people even hugging him. He’s a social creature and seems to thrive on the attention. Well, TK might need to reassess that, he seems to be more of an extrovert to be honest, that spending time with people seems to fill him up with energy. There’s a genuinity to him as he talks to people, even briefly, his attention on you at full, his questions laced with curiosity and warmth. TK is familiar with this, it’s just like with his dad, and people just seem to naturally orbit towards him.

When they get to a table in the living room where people are playing beer pong Carlos stops again. 

“Greg, is this your new pad? It’s gorgeous man.”

“Well it’s my parents, but I’ll take the credit.” Greg says, does a handshake with Carlos and smiles nicely at TK before he throws the small pingis ball, and gets it into the cup. He whoops and high fives both TK and Carlos and TK feels overwhelmed.

“Hi, do you want anything to drink?” Carlos asks him.

“Yeah sure.”

“Okay, I’ll be right back.” He strokes a hand down TKs back as he leaves, and TK kind of wishes he wouldn’t have to be left alone because that’s way more unsettling than it should be.

“Hi, TK.” Someone shouts and so TK somehow finds himself sitting down on a cream coloured couch, opposite Alex and a guy he knows is called Matt. 

“So, dish?” Matt says, leaning forward curiously. Alex rolls his eyes. 

“Eermm…”

“About you and Carlos, it’s exciting.”

“Don’t push him, TK’s shy.” Alex chimes in, tone cold and judging. Both Alex and Matt snicker and TK rolls his eyes. He really shouldn’t be giving in to this, it’s pathetic. 

“What do you want to know?” He says instead.

“Everything, when? How? How far, all the details please.” TK feels nervous and small, doesn’t know exactly what to say and Alex butts in again, making TK feel even smaller. 

“You know what, clearly they haven’t done anything yet, it’s no point.”

“And how would you know that Alex?” He forces out. 

“Because I know Carlos….And I know you so.” TK rolls his eyes, grimaces but doesn’t dare say anything.

“I’m going to get a refill.”

Thank fuck TK thinks.

“Can I get you anything? A juice box or a chocolate milk?” He asks haughtily. 

“No, actually Carlos is getting me a drink, but thank you for asking.” He smiles, fakely, tone overly cheerful and watches Alex facade crack for a moment, before he masks it back underneath a cold smile.

“Ohhh, what’s up babe?” Carlos says, and jumps over the couch to sit down next to him while TK looks triumphantly at Alex, daring him to say anything. Alex rolls his eyes but leaves, silently, thank god. TK accepts the blue cup from Carlos and takes a sip, only to almost spit it out immediately.

“Argh, this is not beer Carlos.” Carlos laughs but switches them immediately.

“Ah, yeah that’s not beer you’re right, it’s Kombucha, I’m driving, remember?”

“You drink Kombucha?”

“Yeah, it’s good for your digestion.”

“Yeah I know, my dad drinks it all the time.”

“Your dad’s cool, he’s nice.”

“He is yes.”

“Why don’t you sound happy about it?”

“Oh.” TK blushes, not realising he must have sounded sarcastic. He shrugs, not wanting to sound childish. “Well, it was hard enough growing up with a dad who kind of cared more about working and being at the station than he did being at home, so that when he actually was home he was always busy doing other things than spending time with me or Mateo.” He confesses and Carlos gives him a thoughtful look. “He’s not as bad anymore though.” He tries to salvage the situation and Carlos nods like he understands. 

“Well he cares about you a lot at least, he made that known during our talk earlier today.” TK groans and takes a big sip of the beer.

“I don’t want to know.” Carlos laughs and takes out his phone.

“Okay, selfie time.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

“You really are relentless, huh?” But Carlos just smiles winningly when TK leans in close and then because he’s had a little bit to drink, he feels brave, and leans even further in to kiss Carlos’ cheek.

“Yes, you get in.” He encourages. He takes the photo, smiles brightly when TK’s lip connects with his cheek and then he takes another one, TK sticking his tongue out in the background. 

“Perfect.” Carlos declares and before TK can really do anything Carlos, laughingly gets dragged away by some of his friends, promising TK to be back any moment. Just as Carlos leaves, Iris takes his place, hair curly and kind of all over the place and still wearing Carlos’ jumper. Somehow TK can appreciate that she doesn’t seem to care what anyone thinks about her. She smiles mischievously, eyes sparkling, making her look a lot like Michelle in this moment. 

“Hi.” TK takes a sip of his drink.

“Hi.” He says.

“So, did Carlos ditch you or something?”

“Erm? Maybe? I mean probably, he said he would come back but I doubt it.”

“Yeah that’s probably a lost cause. You look nice by the way.” She means it, genuinely, TK can tell and it makes him feel a little better.

“Thanks, I can’t take any credit though, it was all Mateo.” Iris laughs.

“I like Mateo, he’s fun.”

“Mhm, I hope you’re nice to him though.”

“Funnily enough he said the same thing to me about you.”

“Really?”

“Yes, although I think you can actually hold your own, you seem to actually just not give a shit rather than actually be shy like I originally thought.”

“Well Mateo shouldn’t be underestimated.” TK defends.

“Oh I know that, he’s pretty feisty when he wants to be, also hilarious, a breath of fresh air for sure.”

“Okay, good, and also shy? Is that what people think of me?”

“Well that’s what I thought, I can’t speak for the rest.”

“Shy is better than insecure so I’ll take it.” Iris smiles again and takes a sip of her drink, which is definitely way stronger than what TK’s is. TK sits quietly, sipping at his drink and bouncing his leg, not sure what to say now.

“Okay, so I’m really not trying to be awkward, but I really don’t know what to say.” Iris chuckles and turns her dark green eyes onto him, studying him intently, then she shrugs.

“It’s not awkward, I don’t mind the silent.”

“Okay, well that’s a relief.”

“Yep.”

“Sooo, can I ask something?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, not to be rude or anything, but you don’t seem to really fit into this place either.” He tries not to make it sound judging or anything. But Iris is dressed in jeans with holes in them and Carlos’ jumper with a pair of well worn Converse while most people in this place, that includes the guys and TK, are dressed up way more than she is, with most of the girls in skirts, dresses and heels. TK’s just curious, he likes that she’s dressed just the way she wants to be. She shrugs, smirks, and doesn’t look like she’s offended or anything.

“Just because I’m not dressed like the rest doesn’t mean I don’t like to be here.”

“Yeah, I guess, so do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Like to be here, with these people?”

“These people, or are you actually wondering about Carlos.”

“I wasn’t actually wondering about Carlos, but you can answer that too.” He smiles wrily. 

“Carlos and I have been friends for ages, he’s not so bad, a bit arrogant at times but he’s a good guy with a big heart and my best friend. As for me, I like to have a good time, meet people, have fun. It just doesn't mean that I have to do it wearing heels.”

“Yeah fair enough.”

Iris downs the rest of her drink and puts the plastic glass on the glass table.

“Come on.” She roughly pulls TK to his feet and starts dragging him along.

“Where are we going?” 

“To get more drinks.”

She drags him towards the kitchen and on the way there he apologises to at least three people because Iris is not exactly coordinated when she’s pulling him behind her. He sees the living room open up to a massive patio and an even bigger garden. In the middle there is a pool, illuminescent light casting everyone out there in a somewhat daunting light, making them look a little inhuman. People have started throwing their clothes off and getting into the pool and TK’s pretty sure he sees a couple making out in one of the corners, his face attached to hers, her legs well around his waist as he holds her up in the water.

They get into the kitchen, the music is much lower in here, but it’s still pretty packed with people. Iris drags him to the counter humming to herself. She takes out two plastic cups and puts them on the counter in front of them.

“So, what should I make you then?”

“I guess anything is fine.” TK has drunk alcohol before with Mateo and Paul. He’s been drunk too but not very often and not enough times to know what his tolerance is exactly. 

“Just not something too strong.”

“Of course not.” She pours vodka in both their glasses, way too much but she just giggles to herself and pours some Sprite to go with and then hands one to TK. She takes TK’s beer off him and downs the rest of it and TK rolls his eyes but takes a sip of his new drink, almost coughing it right back up onto Iris.

“Iris!” She laughs and pushes his glass against his, the effect totally ruined by they being plastic glasses.

“It’s my specialiteé.”

“What? Making terrible drinks.” Iris cackles, finding it to be hilarious, or maybe she’s just really drunk, TK can’t know for sure, but it doesn’t matter because there’s suddenly more people piling into the room with TK and Iris getting pushed to the other end of the kitchen where a bunch of people looks to be having a really intense game of beer pong. Even TK gets dragged into the intensity and he whoops and cheers and groans together with Iris and ends up laughing so much at some point that when Iris spits alcohol all over the floor, liquid leaking out from her mouth and nose.

“So gross.” TK laughs, and jumps away as Iris tries to wipe her face on his shirt.

After that him and Iris join up on a team against two Juniors and they get so into the game, the trash talking turns a little too bad at one point and TK gets a lot drunker very quickly, but he’s having a lot of fun he has to admit. They end up winning and TK and Iris jump up and down, absolutely delighted by it, their arms around each other, screaming in ecstasy. 

……..

Some hours later, or he thinks it’s hours, he’s managed to make Iris go talk to a guy named Carl, who TK has english literature with and who he insists is most likely a very nice guy. He was absolutely taken by her and he had insisted Iris couldn't leave him hanging. They’re standing close together a little further away from TK who is sitting on the counter, trying to shake the buzzing of alcohol in his veins off by getting rid of it by drinking excessive amounts of water, which he’s been swallowing down the last 30 minutes. It hasn’t totally worked yet but he thinks he’s well on his way to sobering up.

Carlos wanders into the kitchen and heads for TK when he sees him.

“Hi.”

“Heeelllllooo.” He says, giggles, because whoops he’s definitely not sober by any stretch. Carlos bursts out laughing though, leaning in close to TK’s legs that are dangling off the edge. He lifts an eyebrow.

“It’s all Iris’ fault, she made me play beer pong.” He points to where she is, her head leaning closer to Carl’s as he explains something excitedly to her, waving his hands around.

“Yeah I don’t doubt that for a minute, she’s evil, be careful with her.”

“Well what was I supposed to do, you left me?”

“True, sorry, I didn’t plan for it to take so long.”

“Okay.” He giggles again as he wiggles his legs in front of him. “You want to know something.” He chuckles. Carlos leans a little closer. “Me and Iris won.” He giggles again, delighted over the fact that he got to shoot the last ball into the cup, making it the winning shot. Carlos looks something between amused and endeared, his lip twitching as he tries not to laugh.

“Are you okay though?” Carlos asks, an edge of concern laced in his deep voice. 

“Yeah, yeah I had fun.” He tilts his head and smiles at Carlos who looks much more at ease again.

“Well I hope this is water.” He steps in front of TK, and leans forward into his space, his hands coming to rest on the sides of TK’s body, picking up the glass of water, sniffing at it to make sure.

“It’s water, probably my third one. It’s working a little slower than I had anticipated.” He pouts as Carlos grins at him, making him look ridiculously handsome in the lowkey vibrant lighting in the kitchen. 

“Yeah it tends to take some time you know?”

“Well, no one’s ever told me that, how was I supposed to know?”

“Yeah I guess, well if you continue just drinking water for the rest of the evening you should be fine by the time you go to bed to be honest.” TK nods approvingly. He can work with that. 

He spots Alex entering the kitchen, clinging a little to a guy but looks to be a lot more sober than what TK’s is. He meets TK’s eyes and they narrow so TK automatically leans closer to Carlos, wraps one of his legs around his waist, pushing Carlos closer to himself. Carlos goes, his eyes wide and dark, looking completely caught off guard, but doesn’t say anything. He leans his face closer to TK’s.

“What are you doing?” He whispers, but TK defintiely detects a bit of nervousness in it, spurring him on more. He smiles saucily, making sure Alex can see him and puts a hand on Carlos’ neck, stroking the ends of his hair.

“Just helping you along, Alex is here.” He stops Carlos from turning around and laughs loudly, like Carlos just said something hilarious and Alex glares and stomps outside, TK feeling viciously victorious over something as childish and petty. Carlos still hasn’t stepped away and Tk very slowly releases his hair, his hand falling back down to the counter.

“Errm, he’s left now, you can...I mean, you can step back now.” He forces out and Carlos blinks a few times, like he’s forgotten this was just for show, and something like disappointment passes along his face before he hides it behind a smile.

“Nicely done.” His smile is a little tight around the edges and TK feels really confused for a moment because he definitely thought Carlos would be really happy over this. Well whatever, he shrugs it off, refusing to let it taint this night.

“Do you want to get out of here, get some food?” TK lights up immediately, because DUH, food.

“OOOOO can we get burgers?” Carlos smiles genuinely this time and nods excitedly.

“Yeah of course.”

“Yes, then I am all in.” He jumps off the counter, stumbles slightly because well alcohol, and Carlos grabs him gently by the shoulders to steady him and smiles again, making TK smile shyly back. He waves at Iris as he leaves and she looks delighted for him and gives him a thumbs up as encouragement.

On the way out Carlos walks briskly, not saying bye to anyone, which TK would maybe think to be strange if he was sober, but now he’s too busy trying to keep up to think too closely about why Carlos almost seems desperate to get out of here. 

……

They end up at the Corner Cafe and Carlos shrugs and smiles secretely at TK like this is now somehow their place. He orders two burgers with fries, two cokes and a big glass of water for TK that he makes him drink before he’s allowed any food. TK rolls his eyes and downs it in seconds, Carlos giving him an impressed look before sliding the burger over to him. 

“You were so good today though.” Carlos says, mouth full of fries. “Alex was so pissed.”

“Well I just hope he doesn’t put glass in my smoothie on Monday or something.” He dips his last fry in Carlos’ ketchup and Carlos pushes the plate closer to him, giving him permission to take more.

“Aww you’re giving me your fries? That’s the way to my heart.”

“Ah, so that’s the way to the infamous TK Stand’s heart, I see I see.”

“That and everything sweet.”

“Okay, so what’s your favourite sweet?” TK narrows his eyes and points at Carlos with a fry, ketchup dripping onto the table.

“Are you trying to bribe me into something?”

“Nope, just curious.”

“Hm, well Skittles are a classic, Swedish chocolate is you know out of this world, sour stuff I’m keen on too. And then I’ll eat any sweet pastry but I’m a simple man and I will most likely go for something as simple as a very smudgy and moist chocolate cake.”

“Wow, you’re really particular huh?”

“What can I say, I like my sweets…”

“Like you like your men?” TK bursts out laughing because that sounds ridiculous.

“How are you planning to end that sentence?” Carlos thinks on it.

“I like my sweets like I like my men, rich, sweet and gone in the morning?”

“Eww, no that’s terrible.” Carlos laughs too. 

“Anyway, I really like that you’re not afraid of him, I mean Alex.”

“No, no I am terrified of him.” TK corrects.

“But you don’t let him steamroll all over you. Like that day in school when he was trying to be a dick about your shoes.” TK looks down and then up again, biting at his lip.

“You remember that?”

“Are you kidding me, yeah of course I do...I mean I couldn’t really say anything because we were together and everything but I liked the shoes they were really cool. They suited you.” TK lifts an eyebrow and holds back a smile.

“I mean Alex is like gorgeous, but you have way better style.” He continues and TK rolls his eyes. 

“Thank you, I guess.” He laughs at what he thinks is a compliment off.

“Do you need anything else?”

“No, thank you I think we’re good.” He says to the waiter that for once isn’t Joan, she doesn’t work night shifts, and she starts taking their food away while Carlos’ phone beeps a few times. He frustratingly puts the phone back into his pocket.

“He just makes me so frustrated sometimes.”

“Why are we still talking about him?”

“Like tonight, he barely talks to me at all during the party, and then we leave, I have like a thousand texts from him.” He gestures angrily to his phone in his pocket, completely missing the point TK was trying to make, that he’s kind of over talking about Alex right now.

“Okay, well have you been responding?” He puts his jacket on, standing up and putting some distance between them.

“No, no, I think I might just call him when I get home or something.”

“Oh.” TK feels a little annoyed for some reason. “So you guys still talk on the phone then?” He tries not to sound annoyed though, that would be stupid.

“I mean, not as much as we used to, but yeah, sometimes.” TK doesn’t say anything, just nods his head a few times and tries not to grimace. Carlos rolls his eyes.

“What?” He demands.

“Hmm?”

“Well, you do this thing, you have this whole judgy face scenario going on.” He counters with and TK sighs.

“Well I guess I just think it’s kind of weird that you’re still talking to your ex girlfriend on the phone. It’s not healthy.” Carlos scoffs.

“Oh I’m sorry, so you’re the expert now? You’ve never even had a boyfriend.”

“Well you’ve only had one and you’re completely obsessed with him so that doesn’t necessarily make you the bachelor.” 

“Okay, one, I am NOT obsessed with Alex.” TK steps closer, a challenge in his voice.

“Okay, so prove it then, don’t call him tonight.” He sits down in front of Carlos, arms crossed over his chest, eyebrow raised like he’s daring Carlos to argue with him.

“You know for someone who’s quiet all the time, you sure do have a lot of opinions.” Carlos leans forward, eyes glinting. 

“Yeah well I just think it’s because no one’s ever been honest with you Carlos Reyes.” He leans forward too. Carlos shakes his head but there’s a smile playing around his lips.

“Okay fine… be honest with me then, why haven’t you had a boyfriend before?” TK’s eyebrow knit together in a frown, a little taken aback by his question.

“I don’t know, I guess I’ve never liked anyone like that before.” Which is pretty much the truth.

“I don’t believe you.” TK’s eyes widen, completely caught off guard. 

“What?”

“Come on TK, what happened to no secrets, Fight Club.”

“We haven’t watched that yet so I don’t know.”

“You’re stalling.” Carlos gives him a kind look and TK sits back, bounces his feet up and down.

“Fine, fine, love is so nuanced so I love reading about it, or try to capture it in drawings or even sometimes writing about it when I feel like it, but when it’s real…”

“It’s what, scary?” TK nods, biting at his lips, feeling the nice night they’ve had together turn more serious.

“Why, why is that scary?” Carlos has genuine confusion on his face and TK sighs again, looking down at the table.

“Because the more people you let into your life, the more they can just walk right out.” Realisation dawns on Carlos face and he looks genuinely upset by TK’s confession and TK feels stupid for ruining their evening.

“I know.” Carlos says, and somehow TK believes that he does, he wonders why that is? 

“My dad, he died a couple of years ago, 4 years now.” TK’s eyes widen and feels really stupid, because he had no clue and it also means Carlos’ genuinely understands what he’s saying.

“Fuck, I’m sorry Carlos, this was stupid, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“It’s okay, he had cancer and he got really ill really quickly and just like that, one day he was just gone, left me and my two sisters and mother alone in a big house with bills that needed to be paid and a hole the size of a sun after him.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, it’s okay. I just don’t talk about it often, but it’s nice, and after what you said I thought you might be able to understand.”

“I feel really stupid now though….”

“Why?”

“Well, no one died. My mother just walked out and left…”

“You can tell me.” Carlos gives TK an encouraging smile, small and genuine and while their stories aren’t similar maybe he can tell him what happened and he will actually understand. TK runs a hand through his hair, messing it up completely.

“I was 5, my dad was working a lot and he and my mother just fought constantly. I don’t have a lot of happy memories growing up in New York. Then one night my dad was on a really bad call, a fire in an apartment building. He only managed to save a 5 year old child, Mateo, of the whole family and because he had no family or relatives in the whole of America he would have ended up in foster care right then. My dad couldn’t put him through that after his whole family had died so he talked the office into letting him take him home, so he did. Sorry this is turning really long and it’s probably not very interesting.”

“No, no, it’s okay, keep going.”

“Well Mateo came home with him and my mother demanded a divorce then and there, one without any custody. My mom’s a lawyer so there wasn’t really anything my dad could do, he fought her on that but she won. He got full custody, at the same time he was trying to adopt as well, it took a really long time but when it eventually went through he was exhausted and I had spent the better part of a year living at my grandmother’s. So he moved us out of New York and we came here and he became the fire captain over at the 126 and he tried really hard to rebuild it from scratch and he tried even harder to be a dad to us too, even though he wasn’t always there. My mom has a new family now.” He shrugs, clenching and unclenching his fingers on the table in front of him. Very slowly Carlos reaches forward and places his hand on top of TK’s and squeezes, looking very much like he understands TK’s pain, some of it reflected back at him through Carlos’ eyes. 

“Are you in contact with her at all?”

“No, not really, I’m just…. I don’t know. I feel very angry, like she straight up left me you know? And my dad hasn't always been as good of a dad as he is now. Not that he was ever bad or judgy or anything like that, he was just very distant and my mom wasn’t but she still left me, I made her that miserable and I don’t know, she has a new family now so I don’t know how that makes me feel exactly.” Stubbornly TK wipes a tear away from his eye and tries to retract his hand from Carlos’ grip, but he holds on tightly and TK’s eyes flit to his,   
something softening in Carlos’ eyes.

“You can be angry at someone and still miss them.” Carlos says softly and TK nods and opens his mouth again.

“I remember exactly how she used to smell, like Jasmine, I love that smell even to this day.”

“Yeah, it’s a lovely smell.” Carlos agrees.

“I’ve never said any of this to anyone.” He looks up at Carlos through his lashes, a little shyly and Carlos smiles sweetly. 

“I’m glad you told me.” He strokes TK’s hand a few times before he removes his, TK missing the warmth of it immediately. 

“Me too.” TK whispers.

“Well you say you’re afraid of relationships and commitment but we’ve hung out for most of the evening and the night and you don’t seem to be afraid to be with me.”

TK thinks it over, doesn’t know what to say because one of the things he definitely hasn’t felt since he started hanging out with Carlos is fright, it’s the opposite really, he’s felt surprisingly alive, especially this whole evening. 

“I don’t know, you and I are just pretending, I guess it just doesn’t feel real.” It’s the complete wrong thing to say because Carlos’ face falls completely, his openness a minute ago completely gone and replaced by something looking very hurt and sad. TK wishes he could take it back because before he really knows what’s happening Carlos has stood up and grabbed his jacket, refusing to look at TK.

“Come, on, I’ll drive you home.”

“Wait, wait, wait, what just happened, what did I do wrong?” He sounds small and scared and Carlos’ eyes snap to his, regret mixing with discomfort. He closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose before he opens them again and plasters on a smile that looks painful to hold. He drops it immediately and tilts his head.

“Nothing, you did nothing. I just got really tired. It’s okay.” Carlos smiles again, this time it looks more like the ones he’s been directing towards TK recently, so he feels some tension alleviate from his chest. 

“Okay, good, I’m tired too.” That’s a lie though, every moment he’s spent with Carlos in this diner he definitely hasn’t felt an ounce of tiredness but he doesn’t know what else to say and Carlos seems to be really desperate to leave so TK doesn’t want to be difficult. 

“Okay, let me drive you home.” TK nods and gets his jacket, following Carlos to his car in silence. It’s still silent when Carlos starts the car and TK just can’t for the life of him figure out what he said wrong.

“Okay, this is a bit awkward now.” After a beat Carlos snorts, looks at TK and then back at the road.

“You sound like Iris.” TK lifts an eyebrow.

“That doesn’t sound like a bad thing, I like Iris.”

“Me too, and no it isn’t. She’s just you know….”

“Iris?”

“Yeah.” Carlos laughs and TK thinks he understands. 

“Her older sister, Michelle, used to babysit us when we were kids.”

“Ah, really? She’s a paramedic now.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. She works with my dad.”

“Wow, sometimes this town just feels really small.”

“Yeah, it does.”

“Do you think you’ll stay?”

“What? Here?” The question takes him completely off guard and his eyes flit to Carlos’, who is looking straight ahead, unaware that TK is studying him, plum lips, dark eyes, strong nose, jawlines that is to die for, his dark hair that looks that if he’d let it grow out it would be curly. TK looks away again.

“I don’t know, what about you? Are you going to get a scholarship and play football at university?” Carlos snorts but shrugs.

“I don’t think I’ll be playing football for the rest of my life if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No?”

“No, maybe sociology or psychology or something, I’ve always been drawn towards people, but I don’t know.”

“Well I can totally see you as a psychologist.”

“Yeah?” He sounds hopeful when he throws TK a look.

“Yeah, you’re easy to talk to, I mean you’re cocky, don’t get me wrong.” Carlos laughs, like he might agree, but he looks like he wants to know more, so TK continues talking. “But you’re also sweet and very down to earth and you’re easy to be around, I feel I can trust you, so I guess all those things would work in your favour if you ever decided to go down that road.”

“Thanks. You’re easy to be around too.” Carlos says, looks at TK, sincere and open, before he pulls to a stop in front of TK’s house. TK forgets that he’s home, because for a moment it’s really hard to look away from Carlos. He gulps, can’t help but wonder why it’s so hard, Carlos is all the way over in his seat, but he’s looking at TK like he wants to say something more, but then he shakes his head and the spell is broken. TK shakes his own head, clears his throat, but smiles and nods to his house.

“I should get going.”

“Yeah, of course.” But he makes no indication that he really wants that to be the case.

“I had fun tonight.” Carlos lifts an eyebrow. “Yeah, yeah I know, but I had so thank you. It was cool hanging out.”

“It was… well I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah, see you.” He unbuckles his seatbelt and gets out of the car, he turns around and waves and then makes his way up the front step, Carlos stays where he is until TK has unlocked the door and stepped inside, the quiet of the house doing nothing to calm TK down at the moment. He leans back against the door.

“Fuck.” He whispers. He gives himself a moment to try and understand what’s happening here, but piecing anything together while it’s 3am and he’s had alcohol isn’t exactly working, so he gives up.

He wanders into the kitchen, opens the fridge and takes out the jug of water, sees the cupcakes stand on a plate and takes them out too. They look a little wonky, it’s definitely Mateo’s doing, but they taste really good so TK doesn’t mind. He takes one with him, along with a glass of water and goes upstairs. Before he goes to sleep he makes sure to text his dad that he’s home and then he spends a long time just looking at his locked screen, Carlos winking and sticking his tongue out before he falls asleep, absolutely exhausted.

…….

TK wakes when his phone plings unnecessarily loud next to his head. Bleary eyed, he groans, sees it’s barely 9 but perks up a little more when he sees it’s Carlos. He lowers the brightness and blinks a few times, trying to clear his eyes so he can see what it says.

-So, was I right, are you hungover?

TK hasn’t exactly thought about it, but he doesn’t feel bad, just very tired.

-What the hell are you doing up at this time???? And no, I’m fine.

A moment later his phone alerts him to a snapchat message, and he doesn’t even remember adding Carlos, but he must have added himself because when he opens it up there is a photo of Carlos’ short clad legs, trainers on and weights on the ground. TK groans and then realises that he cannot be heard.

-The gym??? Really, what is wrong with you?  
He texts back, sending shocked and appalled emojis with it. 

-Of course, best way to start the day.

-You’re way too happy this early in the morning.

-Not a morning person?

-Definitely not.

-Ahh, I see. I’ll make sure to add that to the ever growing list of Tyler Kennedy Strand then.

-Uggh, no TK, that list can only be called TK.

He only gets a cheeky grin emoji back and he rolls his eyes, feeling much more awake now than a moment ago even though TK wouldn’t mind staying in bed all morning if he could. 

He gets up and thinks he deserves a lot of money from the effort it took and heads downstairs.

His dad is in the kitchen, looking way too upbeat for TK’s tastes.

“Morning kiddo.” His dad says. TK’s only response is to put his head on the counter as he sits down by the kitchen island, groaning as a reply. His dad chuckles.

“Fun night?”

“I’m not hungover, just tired, I got home late.”

“I know, I got a text a little after 3, you must have had fun then.” He lifts his head slightly, looks at his dad through narrowed eyes before he shrugs.

“Yeah it was fun.”

“Good!”

“Small letters dad, I’m gonna go deaf.” His dad ruffles his hair and TK swats his hand away.

“Breakfast?” 

“Yeah, I guess.”

Instead of pancakes, which TK expects to get for breakfast, he gets greek yogurt, honey, nuts and some blueberries instead, he frowns when Owen has the audacity to laugh at him. 

“What is this?” He picks at the food, like he’s a child and sticks his tongue out to try and lick it before he even tries this.

“It’s what I usually eat for breakfast.”

“Well if I knew I was going to get your food for breakfast I would have just made porridge for myself.” But he takes a bite, and as far as his dad’s food goes this time around, it’s alright. His dad looks smug, like he knows what TK is thinking.

“Where is Mateo?”

“Still asleep I’m presuming, he got home late too.”

“Right.”

“Got any plans for today?” TK shrugs.

“What’s Carlos doing?”

“Why?” He looks at his dad suspiciously and he just shrugs. 

“Just wondering, maybe you should do something together?”

“Yeah, maybe, so you like him then?” He takes another bite, avoids his dad’s eyes and focuses very intently on chewing. 

“Do you?”

“I asked you first!”

“Well, he’s nice, yes, politie, seems to make you feel very defensive though.” He meets his dad’s eyes, who is holding back a smile. 

“I’m not, am I? Well okay fine, yeah I like him as well, as a friend though, like a friend dad.”

“Like a friend of course, I didn’t say anything else, do you happen like him as something more than a friend though?”

“No!” He almost spits the food out trying to get the reply out as fast as possible.

“I’m not judging TK, if you’re sleeping with him or whatever it is that you teenagers do then that’s fine, as long as you’re being safe.”

“DAD!” TK blushes furiously, he does not want to have a conversation about sleeping with Carlos with his dad, in fact he doesn’t want to talk to Owen about sleeping with anyone either, like ever. Owen smirks and laughs evilly and TK silently goes back to his food.

“I’m not sleeping with him, we’re just….friends.”

“Okay, well that’s fine too. Just as long as you’re being safe.”

“I am being safe.”

“Okay, so are you hanging out with him today then?” TK shrugs.

“Why are you being so pushy about it?” Owen gives him a cryptic look then he shrugs.

“Nothing, you’ll figure it out by yourself.”

“Huh?”

“Okay, well I’m taking a shower.” He leaves, with TK having questions that get ignored so TK lets it go and takes his phone out, his finger hovering over the text button, not sure whether or not to text Carlos. If he does, will he be too pushy? Or hanging out, is that something completely out of the question? They didn’t exactly put it in the contract but TK feels that if he really wants to justify hanging out with Carlos, other than just feeling like he wants to for some reason, he could just say it would be good for them to sell the whole thing better. 

Carlos hasn’t said anything after the emoji, it’s staring back at him now, feeling very much like it’s taunting him. He texts back a facepalming emoji and one that sticks its tongue out, feeling like it’s at least an answer, though a little flirty, maybe?

He gets up, makes a cup of tea and takes out another cupcake from yesterday and sits down to play some playstation while he tries to think about what to do. 

“I’m going to the gym TK.” Owen says at some point and he grunts as a reply too busy shooting bad guys, because sometimes that’s all a guy’s gotta do to let off some steam. 

TK hears the door open again and he isn’t that into his game so that he doesn’t notice that it’s way too soon for Owen to be back yet. He pauses the game and leans backwards, his head leaning off the back of the couch so he can see who it is. He spots Mateo and his mouth open, because what the fuck. Mateo is sneaking around, taking his shoes off slowly and putting them quietly by the shoe rack, trying to tiptoe into the living room and up the stairs. Bless open floor plans because while Mateo hasn’t noticed TK, he can very clearly see him from where the position he is in.

“Dad isn’t home if that’s who you are trying to hide from.” Mateo jumps a mile and it’s totally worth craning his neck for because Mateo almost trips and TK snickers loudly. Mateo’s eyes snap to his and he draws a breath of relief while seemingly relaxing a little bit more.

“He isn’t?”

“No, he went to the gym. Where have you’ve been?” On closer inspection, as Mateo walks forward, he’s dressed way nicer than what he would be if he’s just been playing playstation with Paul like he said he would be doing yesterday, dark circles under his eyes, which do like wistful and happy, hair completely all over the place and realisation dawns on TK.

“Who is the girl?”

“What?”

“You look like you’ve spent the night having lots and lots of sex.”

“I do not.” Self consciously he tries to fix his hair and his clothes and TK rolls his eyes.

“I don’t think that will do anything, I thought you were playing video games with Paul.”

“I was, and then I got other plans.”

“And you didn’t tell dad.”

“No, it was a spur of the moment kind of thing.”

“Who is the girl?”

“How did it go with Carlos, how was the party?”

“Don’t change the subject.” He accuses, pointing at Mateo with the controller who just snags it out of his hand and jumps over the back of the couch to sit beside him to start the game back up. 

“I’m not, I’m just curious.”

“It was fun actually...Also you need a shower, you reek, is that smoke I’m smelling too?”

“Whoops and no.” He moves away from TK, but stops to sniff at himself for a moment, and then just shrugs when he can’t smell anything out of the ordinary, TK wrinkles his nose in distaste. 

“Yeah, please go do that now...” His phone chimes and TK takes it out, smiling as he sees it’s from Carlos.

-Soooo, what are you doing today?

TK feels his heartbeat speed up excitedly and he types back a reply almost immediately. 

-I was about to ask you the same actually, nothing, what do you have in mind?

-How about coffee this afternoon. You drink coffee, right?

-I drink it but only when it’s sweet and sugary.

-Ah yes, I would expect nothing else, so, I’ll pick you up at 2?

-Sounds good.

-See you later.

TK smiles and puts the phone down, Mateo has paused the game, smirking.

“What?”

“Was that Carlos by any chance?”

“Maybe…”

“It totally was, om my god you should have seen your face, you look all happy and giddy, what he promised you sex already?”

“For fuck’s sake Mateo shut up!” Mateo laughs.

“So, are you going on a date?”

TK is very close to snapping that it’s not a date, but bites back the reply just as quickly because in Mateo’s eyes it’s of course a date, not just two friends hanging out like it is to TK.

“We’re just going for coffee…” TK mutters and glares as it sends Mateo off again.

When TK leaves to go upstairs, he can’t help but feel significantly less happy about seeing Carlos then he did just a moment ago. Fucking Mateo, always ruining everything for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time around TK and Carlos go on a 'date'.
> 
> Some things were switched up and around in this chapter so everything would fit together. And also things are starting to get complicated, because FEELINGS hehe.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who has been reading <3 it means the world!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally I had planned to update sooner because last I updated this was in beginning of December when I wrote this as coping mechanism because I had to put my cat down. Alas I am terrible at keeping a writing schedule because then I thought well I'll update before season 2 starts and NOPE.
> 
> But here we are finally with some more silly cute boys that don't know they are in love.
> 
> Enjoy.

At exactly 2pm TK walks out to find Carlos leaning against his car, sunglasses on, because of course he has, while wouldn’t he try to give off the whole cool, bad boy with a big heart vibes TK’s been getting off him recently, what more could he do than to really sell the whole thing off than wearing sunglasses? 

Carlos smiles brightly when he spots him, moving to open the door.

“Hi.”

“Hi.” TK can’t help but smile, even as he tries to bite his lip, preventing Carlos from seeing how happy he is to see him again. 

Ugh.

“How are you?” Carlos asks when he’s back in the driving seat.

“Fine, honestly, just very tired, you woke me up.”

“Oh? Sorry.”

“No one I know goes to the gym at 9.”

“8 actually.”

“Even worse.” Carlos chuckles and TK sits back, letting the comfortable atmosphere wash over him. It’s surprisingly mild weather for October and TK’s happy to just soak in the sun for the rest of the year if he’s being honest. One thing he will never miss about New York is the weather, to this very day he still hates the winter, doesn’t like the way the cold creeps in and settles inside of his bones, festers and grows into some sort of mild seasonal depression. Also, if he’s going to make an actual list about stuff he doesn’t like about New York he feels he could fill a whole goddamn notebook, and TK doesn’t want to think about New York when he’s being with Carlos anyway. 

“So, where are we going, you never said?”

“Oh, right, well I was thinking Tilly’s, they have a nice outdoor area to sit and it’s pretty good weather, so…”

“Oh, yeah that’s perfect I love Tillys’.”

“Me too.” Carlos sends him a secretive smile before he focuses back on the road.

Tillys’ was a café in the outskirts of town, that made incredible sweet and over the top coffees but was hidden well enough that not everyone knew about it. TK stumbled upon it once when he was aimlessly wandering about and he had noticed that it had a book exchange corner, where you left books and then were allowed to take one home. He had found a beautiful copy of Rebecca the first time he had gone inside and sat at the back, a hot chocolate and thriving being surrounded by the low murmuring of couples and friends talking to each other, warm lighting and piano music in the background, a great setting to get caught up in a book. 

They get there quickly, the Sunday traffic light this afternoon and find a parking spot just by the door. What TK particularly likes about the place is that it seems to be unable to make up its mind about what the interior design really wants to be. It makes it feel used and lived in to him but he gets it when people say the whole vibe confuses them with the whole artdeco thing going on, mixing with torn dark wooden floors, pots and plants everywhere as well as the whole mismatch of chairs and some sort of rip off of Scandinavian minimalism. But TK loves it and Carlos seems to like it too, looking very comfortable where he stands ready to order.

“I’m paying.” Carlos lifts an eyebrow. “You paid yesterday, it’s only fair.”

“Fine. Well can I just have a black coffee please.”

“Really? A black coffee? That’s like the most boring thing you can drink.” TK scoffs and Carlos just shrugs. 

“Okay, a black coffee and for me, I’ll take an iced caramel mocha latte please.” Carlos grimaces but lets TK pay.

“No judgement.” TK warns.

“I’m not judging, but that sounds way too sugary.”

“Are you not a sugary person?”

“I’m a normal person when it comes to sugar, you’re the extreme one.” He accuses, holds the door open for TK so they can get to the outdoor backyard, rickety chairs and benches, the stone wall surrounding the place full of fairy lights, making the place feel really comfortable during evenings. TK’s been to a poetry reading out here once, it was lovely. 

“Maybe, but coffee is just too bitter when you drink it like that, it’s so bland.”

“You’re being so contradictive right now though, you can’t say it’s both bitter and bland.”

“Yes I can.” He sits down, Carlos in front of him, making him look huge in the small chair he’s sitting in. “Bitter because the coffee is blergh, and bland because it’s just coffee, with nothing! It’s so boring.”

“I think you’ll find that you would actually be able to fully enjoy a cup of coffee when it’s just black instead of adding all these things into it that takes away the actual rich taste of it.”

“So you don’t drink milk then?”

“No, well I don’t drink it but I use it from time to time in coffee but not often.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like it.” TK chuckles.

“You’re odd. It’s surprising.”

“As opposed to what exactly?”

“Errm…” TK tries to find a nice way of saying that he thought Carlos was just a simple jock, without it coming across as completely crude and rude.

“A jock?”

“Well…. okay that makes me sound like an ass, which admittedly I guess is fitting right now.”

“Not all jocks are thick headed and only think about drinking and screwing girls, that’s an incorrect stereotype I’ll have you know.”

“Well, you don’t go for girls anyway.” TK lets slip out and Carlos laughs.

“No, definitely not.”

“Since when?” He asks curiously and Carlos studies him for a moment. 

“Since when am I not a thick headed jock or since I knew I was gay?”

“The thick headed thing.” TK laughs. “No, about being gay, if don’t you mind me asking?”

“I don’t mind.” He shrugs. A waiter comes with their drinks then, TK’s eyes lighting up excitedly as he sees his beautiful masterpiece arrive, and can’t wait to dig into it. Carlos’ black coffee looks ridiculous beside his sugary piece of heaven. 

“A few years ago now that’s when I came out, but I guess always, you know?”

“Yeah.” Because TK knows. 

“And you?”

“Same, Mateo and my dad were cool about it, not that I ever thought that they wouldn’t be, but there’s always a certain insecurity around it even when it comes to someone as liberal as my dad, but they were fine and my friends were too.”

“I told Iris before I told my family.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, she just gave me this very Iris look and said that I would break so many hearts in the future.”

“And have you?”

“No, I’m a nice guy, haven’t you noticed?” Carlos smirks.

“You’re an okay guy.” TK corrects.

“Oh, okay, I’m an okay guy now am I? What’s a good guy then in the TK Strand book?”

“That’s... well, you are putting me on the spot now.” Carlos smirks again.

“Oh, I definitely am, what’s your response though, I’m very curious.” TK tries to think.

“Handsome.”

“One, I am handsome, two so for the person to be a good guy he has to be handsome now?”

“You’re out to make me look like a bad guy today! And if you’re in love with someone it doesn't matter because per definition then the person is going to be handsome anyway. Looks are subjective.”

“Fair enough, I’ll let you get away with it this one time. So, what more is on the list?”

“Nice, listens, funny, caring, I don’t know, just someone you can be yourself with 100%, someone who doesn’t make you feel bad about yourself, someone you can laugh with and talk about everything with or not talk about anything at all with. I think someone that has similar values to you as well is important. Someone that loves you loudly and quietly at the same time.”

“Well this list is definitely better.” Carlos studies him closer for a moment and TK feels a little hot under the collar while being on the receiving end of the look in his eyes.

“Someone that loves you quietly, what do you mean?”

“Oh, well I guess just sometimes it doesn't always have to be big gestures and words, sometimes it’s small gestures, like sending them an article you know they’re going to like, leave a glass of water on their nightstand, helping with something without being asked, buying them something small and insignificant you know they are going to like and such.”

“Yeah, I think I know what you mean.” He says softly and TK nods, smiles and looks down at his drink before he takes a sip, needing a moment to himself. He clears his throat.

“So, how many siblings do you have?”

“I have a younger, she’s 11 and an older who is 23.”

“What are their names?”

“Lola and Sofia, what is this? Three questions.”

“Sure.” Carlos eyes narrow.

“If I didn’t know any better I’d say you’re trying to get to know me?”

“Well that’s absurd.”

“Mhm, well my turn then, what’s your favourite book?”

“Oh, well that’s really hard, like I’m not too picky with what I read so anything goes.”

“Hmm, well at the top off your head then, say one.”

“The only one that comes to mind right about now is The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt which was a trip to read for sure which is why it was so memorable. But like people can be so snobbish about books, like if you haven’t read certain books, like classic literature then it’s like you can’t have an opinion, especially if your favourite book has been written in the last few years then it doesn’t count or something. I just try and read as much as I can because I enjoy it.”

“Huh? Hierarchies within book communities, fascinating. “

“Yeah you’d be surprised, you can’t escape those.”

“Yeah I guess.”

“Favourite colour?” Carlos huffs while TK laughs.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Blue.”

“Solid choice, solid choice Mr Quarterback.”

“I’m a running back, nice try.”

“Really?”

“Do you know anything about football?”

“No.” TK laughingly admits. 

“Also, speaking of football, we need to add another thing to this whole dating deal. I need you to show up to my games.”

“What? No, Carlos, I hate football.” He groans. 

“A moment ago it was that you didn’t know a lot about football and now you suddenly hate it?”

“Fine I don’t hate it, but do I really have to show up to all of the games?” He pouts.

“Give me your phone.”

“Why?” But he’s already handing it to Carlos who opens up his own. TK takes a sip of his coffee and hears a photo being taken, his eyes snapping back to Carlos who is grinning softly.

“Also I air dropped my football schedule to your phone so you can pick and choose which ones you want to go to, I’m willing to compromise on this.” He gives TK his phone back. 

“Fine, I will show up to some.”

“Good.”

“What does a running back do then?” Carlos laughs.

“You really don’t know anything about football.”

“Nope, it’s not my thing.”

“What, hot men running around in shorts is not your thing?” TK snorts.

“Okay when you put it like that…” He concedes to Carlos’s point and takes a sip to hide his reddening cheeks. When he looks up Carlos is looking at him again, gingerly, fondness in his eyes, a soft smile playing at the corner of his lips. His hair looks soft, a curl in his fringe having fallen forward, eyes intoxicating when he looks at TK.

“Here, you have some coffee…” TK moves to wipe it away, and misses because Carlos fondly rolls his eyes before he gently reaches forward, the whole thing reminiscent of the kitchen just yesterday, and puts his thumb at the top of TK’s lip to gently wipe it off him. His breath hitches and TK feels vulnerable in an indescribable way as the world stills between them for a moment, noise falling away and leaving them in a bubble, tucked away from the rest of the world as Carlos’ eyes flit up to his and TK holds his gaze for just a moment. TK forgets to breathe…

The sound of a car skidding on the road outside seems to break them both out of the moment, Carlos clearing his throat a few times and TK wringing his hands together in his lap, trying to shake everything off.

“Thanks.” He says and Carlos nods mutely, looking the least relaxed TK’s ever seen him look when they’ve been together. All of his refined confidence has been stripped back, instead he looks at TK like he’s coming to some sort of realisation and it’s making TK feel unsure, about himself, about Carlos, about what he’s doing here with Carlos to begin with. He swallows down his discomfort, digs his fingers into his thighs and focuses on breathing in and out, getting rid of the lingering sensation of something happening before his eyes he has no idea what it is. 

Carlos phone plings on the table and he picks it up, frowning, before it eases off his face.

“Okay, I have to pick up Lola from a friend, she was supposed to stay longer I thought, but apparently not, hope that’s okay.”

“Yes of course.”

“Okay, I’ll pick her up on the way to your house, does that work?”

“Of course.” Carlos smiles gratefully, finishing his last sip of plain black coffee and they start to make their way to his car, the air between them much more relaxed again, TK feeling thankful it can just go back to the way it was before. 

In the car Carlos puts on the radio, We Are Never Getting Back Together playing by Taylor Swift and it doesn’t take too long for Carlos to start singing, TK laughing, but following shortly after. By the time they pull up to where Lola is they are both singing at the top of their lungs, laughing, dancing in their seats and both of them losing themselves a little in the bubble of joy, unaware that there is still a world spinning outside of the car window. Both of them stop abruptly when Lola opens the door, the bubble bursting loudly and Carlos lowers the volume immediately while Lola grins like it’s the funniest thing she’s seen.

“Hi.” Carlos clears his throat. “How was it with Amanda?”

“It was good, who is this?”

“Erm, hi, I’m TK, I’m Carlos’....” TK eyes flit to his, unsure of what to say at all, Carlos mirroring his expression, a look of panic in his eyes. “I’m a friend of his.” He settles on.

She looks between them, mischievous and sneaky, TK’s convinced she gives Carlos a lot of trouble.

“I’m Lola, Lola Reyes, and Lo to my friends.” TK gives Carlos a look.

“She’s feisty.” He whispers. 

“You have no idea.”

“Nice to meet you Lola.”

“You too, Carlos’ friend named TK, that’s an odd name, why is your name TK?”

“Lo, be nice.” Carlos chides and she sticks her tongue out, ignores her older brother and focuses her dark chocolate coloured eyes back on TK, inquiring but round and childlike too.

“It’s a nickname, I don’t really like my actual name.”

“What is it?”

“You can’t tell anyone it’s a secret.” He lowers his voice and she leans forward, excitedly.

“It’s Tyler Kennedy, Tyler was my granddad’s name and Kennedy was my mother’s dad and they couldn’t decide so they gave me both.”

“Ohh, that’s cool.”

“Remember it’s a secret so you can’t tell anyone, especially not Carlos.” She giggles but gives him a conspiratorial look and he zips his mouth shut pretending to lock it.

“Okay you can call me Lo.” TK chuckles and Carlos looks delighted.

“Nice job.”

“Why, thank you.”

Carlos drops TK off at his house and for some reason TK doesn’t want to leave, he’s had a really nice and fun afternoon, forgetting for a moment that it’s supposed to be fake when Carlos laughs easily and somehow manages to match TK’s wit and quick mind, it’s not often it happens. Carlos looks like he has a similar battle in his mind, but he smiles and hugs TK and TK thinks he’s going to live on that for the rest of the year so it’s not all bad.

“Bye.”

“Bye!” He calls and walks away, listening to Carlos drive off.

…….

Owen tends to take at least one day off completely during the week which is usually Sundays, the one day he dedicates fully to Mateo and TK, but with someone being sick this week he had to cover for them himself, kind of last minute and with an apologetic text in their family group chat. Mateo and TK have invited Marjan and Paul over though, and they have ordered pizza and eaten in front of the TV that is playing Taken at the moment and barely moved all evening. 

TK’s a bit consumed by his phone, particularly his Instagram app in which Carlos has put up a story of TK, which he has rewatched about a million times by now. It’s from the coffee shop, TK looking coy and smiling softly with his hands around the cup of coffee with the caption Date on it, making TK’s heart beat unnecessary quick as he presses on it again and again. He’s also been tagged in Iris’ stories from the party yesterday, photos and videos he had no clue were even taken.

“Iconic.” Paul says.

“It’s not iconic, it’s silly.” Marjan comments.

“As if? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t want to be able to command a room like Liam Neeson.”

“Sure, but I’m going to find you, I’m going to kill you, it’s overrated.”

“Shut up.”

TK clicks through Iris’ stories, apparently she seems to have left shortly after TK and Carlos did, there’s video of her on a swing, someone else on her right side and TK wonders if it’s Carl.

“TK, hellooo.”

“Huh?” He says when Marjan whacks a pillow in his face, she rolls her eyes.

“Oh my god, stop being so obsessed with your phone, what’s so interesting on it anyway?”

“Carlos obviously.” TK glares at Paul who ignores him.

“Okay but you do know bros before hoes is a rule that applies to you too TK.”

“Shut up, I was just on instagram.” 

“Oh, I saw you two went on a date, how was it?” Paul rubs salt into the wound by saying. TK runs a hand through his hair, eyes flitting to Mateo who is definitely also distracted and to Marjan who is laying on the carpet, head resting on her hands and Paul who is just to his right, to buy some time.

“It was good, fun, chill.” He doesn’t know what to say.

“Is he being nice?” Marjan asks, sounding slightly concerned.

“Yes of course, why would he not be?”

“Because he is Carlos.”

“Marjan you really need to drop the whole he cheated once thing and move on.” Marjan whacks Paul with the pillow underneath her and his eyes widen as well as Marjan’s because if a pillow fight is about to break loose, no one stands a chance against Paul, Marjan knows this well enough.

“No fighting, I just cleaned the living room today.” It’s the first thing Mateo has said in a while and he gives them a stern look which is slightly surprising to be honest and Paul looks at Marjan and then at TK who just shrugs.

“Why did you clean?”

“Because it was dirty Marjan, you would know that if you have ever hoovered in your life.”

“Ohhhh, you’re sassy today, where did that come from?” Mateo ignores her and goes back to his phone, texting again.

“Don’t ask me Marjan, I have no clue.” TK adds before Marjan can say anything, he has been a little too busy recently to really pay too much attention to Mateo. Discreetly he throws Mateo another look though, in case he can read anything out of the ordinary on his face, but he’s never been able to do so before and he doesn’t think he’ll suddenly be able to out of nowhere.

Unlike TK who carries his heart on his sleeve Mateo can be much more closed off than him, suffering in silence, either until he cracks completely or chooses to let it go so TK is never really sure what to expect when it comes to him. But Mateo is frowning and he is texting with someone TK doesn’t know who with so maybe he should ask, just to make sure.

His phone alerts him to a snapchat message, a photo from Carlos with Iris asleep on a bed, drooling all over a pillow. It makes TK snort and he sends a photo back of his feet, showing Marjan and Paul, still intently watching the movie playing. 

-Ah nice I love Taken  
Carlos texts him and TK rolls his eyes because of course he does.

-Of course you do, Marjan just called it silly to Paul’s face, it could have ended badly.

-Insulting Liam Neeson, it’s a low blow.

-What is it with Liam Neeson suddenly, there are much hotter dudes out there.

-Don’t tell me you’re a Ryan Gosling fan?  
Carlos sounds appalled and TK swallows his laughter so not to alert everyone else to what’s happening.

-What is wrong with Ryan Gosling?

-He’s fine enough, he just completely butchered everything called talent in La La Land. I was not myself after watching that film, I hated it so.

-I actually liked it.

Carlos sends back a face planting emoji.

-Oh god, we really need to have a conversation about movies… 

-Are you going to convince me that La La Land is shit?

-Among other things.  
He texts back cryptically and doesn’t say anything else and TK wonders what it means. 

When Carlos doesn’t say anything more he puts his phone down and chooses to actually try and pay attention to his friends for a while and the film he’s seen a million times already, ignoring the fluttering of his heart, something that’s becoming harder and harder to ignore.

……

At 2am TK wakes, feeling so confused he doesn’t know where he is for a moment. Marjan and Mateo are sleeping side by side in the chaise lounge with a blanket draped over them both, Mateo clutching his phone to his chest and Marjan leaning on his shoulder, snoring quietly. The TV has been turned off and Paul is nowhere to be found. TK wipes at his eyes before he pulls the blanket off and goes in search of him, finding him easily enough in the kitchen, putting away the leftover pizza and cleaning away the snacks and mess they’ve left earlier.

“Hi.” TK yawns and sits down. Paul looks up and smiles.

“Hi.”

“Why are you up?”

“Couldn’t sleep.” Paul shrugs and opens up the cupboard to take out a plate, showcasing that Paul has spent way too much time in this house, definitely in comparison to the times TK’s been over to Paul’s. TK sighs and nods, steals a Skittle from the opened bag and pops it into his mouth. 

“Soooo, how’s the whole Carlos thing going?” Paul leans forward and gives TK a piercing look, one that says that TK can’t lie his way out of this. He almost chokes on the Skittle, glares through his tears while Paul pushes a glass of water towards him. TK takes a few sips when he’s able to breathe again. 

“Fine.” He bites out, doesn’t much feel like talking about it.

“Is it now?”

“Yes.”

“Anyone figure out you’re faking it yet?”

“No everyone seems to buy it.” TK sighs, Paul lifts an eyebrow.

“Then why do you sound disappointed?”

“I don’t know, it’s much harder to lie to the people I care about than I thought I guess.”

“Aahh, so no feelings about the whole Date thing on Instagram or photos from the party the other day, or the whole him driving you everywhere?” TK glares.

“No, why would I have that?”

“It’s sweet that you think that after almost ten years of friendship, lying works on me.” TK just takes a sip, tries not to let the uncomfortable feeling he has in his stomach derail from what’s important.

“I’m not lying.” Paul studies him for a moment before he shrugs. 

“No, maybe just to yourself actually.”

“I don’t like Carlos if that's what you’re trying to say.”

“Of course not, but you have to admit he’s not as bad as you thought he would be.”

“No, I guess he’s not.”

“So, can we meet him?”

“No, that’s just never happening.” Paul smirks and steals a sip of water from TK’s glass.

“Thanks for keeping it quiet though…”

“Yeah no worries.” Paul reassures him, smiles gently and eats a Skittle too.

“Shut up, it’s like 3am.” Mateo shouts from the living room and TK and Paul laugh before they go back to sleep on the couch where Owen finds them when he comes home at 7, smiles and puts the blanket more securely around Mateo before he walks upstairs and goes to bed.

…..

The issue with dating Carlos was that TK was becoming comfortable, which wouldn’t have been much of an issue under normal circumstances. But because this wasn’t, and the lines between fake and real were becoming increasingly harder to tell the difference between, TK couldn’t help but kind of constantly be little bit on edge all the time, terrified someone would suddenly find everything out and TK would go back to being, well invisible and Carlos would go back to being out of his life, a fear that had suddenly become a little too real for TK.

He would find himself being swept away, spending time with Carlos’ friends, forgetting for a moment that it was fake, only to remember it all too clearly and then feeling sick to his stomach with regret and nerves and anxiety about the whole thing. Sometimes he would wake up in cold sweats in the middle of the night, heart pounding so loudly it would take hours to calm down again. It was starting to take a bit of a toll on him, he was often tired, moody, stayed up late trying to get stuff done for school that he hadn’t had the time to get to earlier, it was frustrating, as everyone around him had taken to Carlos’ presence in his life almost too easy, Owen’s relieved smiles, Mateo’s encouraging looks, it was almost becoming too much for TK. It was just a matter of time before it would leak to Owen that it was a lie and then TK would really have to sit and think hard whether to lie to his dad or not. 

The only time he wasn’t a constant ball of stress and vicious energy was when he spent time with Carlos alone, just the two of them doing stuff together. Often it wasn’t much more exciting than talking, but Carlos was clever, funny, a bit goofy and at times very full of himself, but not in a dick kind of way, it was more endearing than anything and every time he discovered something new about Carlos TK was finding it harder and harder to remind himself why they were doing this in the first place.

“Okay.” Is Carlos' way of greeting when he finds TK in the library, nose in Stephen King’s The Stand, distracted and very consumed by the story. He frowns when his massive hand pushes the book down and he’s met with a Carlos that looks a bit uncomfortable.

“I was reading that.” Carlos ignores him. 

“Okay, so Lola leaked to my mother that we’re friends and she knows your dad was the one that took care of the fire at the neighbour’s that Lola called in. So now you have to come to dinner…” Carlos sheepishly says but he lets TK have his book back. Not that it matters much as it slips from his grip and lands on the floor with an echoing thud. 

“W-what?”

“Yeah.”

“No.” TK says resolutely. 

“Yes.”

“You’re really not used to being told no are you?”

“Don’t change the subject, that’s beside the point.”

“It really isn’t, in fact -”

“Pleeeaseee.” And Carlos gives him goddamn puppy eyes and TK melts right then and there because apparently he’s weak and he groans in frustration.

“Fine, fine, fucking fine.” He mutters but it’s hard to keep a straight face at Carlos’ utter delight at hearing him agree. 

“Perfect, so Friday evening?”

“Yeah, sure I guess.”

Carlos beams and TK thinks it’s worth more than the trouble he’ll get if it goes wrong.

So on Friday evening with his dad away on a shift as usual and Mateo being strangely vacant TK tries not to freak out too badly about meeting Carlos’s family. He’s not always good with people and he has about zero experience meeting parents and annoyingly enough he wants to make a good impression. That bugs him more for some reason as trying to sort through the growing ball of anxiety and mess in his brain is impossible at the moment. In order to shut his brain up he plays Halsey at the loudest volume their house speaker will go up to for an hour while he fixes his hair and changes sneakers three times before he’s satisfied. At 10 to 7 Carlos waits outside, smelling heavily of some aftershave he’s wearing and the curls styled back and casual. TK envies him so much for making everything he does seem so effortless, how everything is smooth and goes salient for him, and if TK’s affection’s for Carlos hadn’t grown as much as they had recently, he'd have been grumpy with him. 

“Hi.” Carlos greets, pulls TK in for a hug where his senses are overloaded by that beautiful perfume, as well as something much muskier and deeper, something that's just Carlos. TK tries very hard not to breathe him in again, and smiles when they pull apart.

On the way over, which isn’t that long, TK tries not to be nervous.

“Are you nervous?” Carlos sees through him, sends him a kind look, eyes flitting back to the road.

“No.” Carlos smirks, gives him a look that says he’s not impressed and TK sighs.

“A little.” He corrects.

“Don’t be, it’s going to be fine.”

“What makes you sure?” Carlos chuckles secretively. 

“I just have a feeling.” TK huffs a little annoyed but drops it for the benefit of not ruining Carlos’ easy looks and happiness he’s radiating off for some reason. It’s a bit infectious. 

Carlos drives up and parks beside a black mini cooper in the driveway and TK refrains from snorting at the obvious size difference and decides not to comment on it. They walk up side by side the short way to the entrance that’s underneath a porch with a slanted roof, a massive screen of ivy growing around it. Someone’s put small lights in it, and it looks lovely, like an entrance to a magical world and TK loves it so much already. The door is unlocked and Carlos opens it.

“Mami, I am home.” He calls and TK can hear voices from the kitchen talking in Spanish.

“In the kitchen.” Comes the reply.

TK takes his shoes off and rolls his eyes when Carlos offers to take the jacket and hang it up for him. He follows Carlos the short way into the kitchen, a dark worn out wooden floor that leads them into an open floor space, creaking with a worn familiarity. The layout of the place is similar to TK’s own house. There’s a fireplace and on each side two massive bookcases stretch out against the wall, and TK can’t help but stray towards it slightly. There’s also two massive leather couches with blankets and pillows on them, well used and comfortable looking. There’s some type of plant or flower on most surfaces around and TK wonders which one in the Reyes family is the most fond of them. On one of the shelves is a black and white photo of a young and handsome man in his early twenties. It’s no doubt that it’s Carlos’ dad, the similarity is quite striking. There’s photos around him too, marriage photos of him and a really pretty woman, Carlos and his dad when he was young, one where his dad lifts him up proudly from a football game, his two sisters perched on each of his shoulders in another, and then lots of the family all together, looking wholesome and happy. There’s a golden chain lying beside the black and white photo too and candles that have been lit on the regular to frame everything. There’s a rosary there as well as pretty pink flowers but TK averts his eyes though, not feeling like intruding on the beautiful shrine and turns around to follow Carlos instead who is looking at him with a knowing glint in his eyes. 

Lola is setting the round table in the middle of the room, behind it a desk that has papers spread all around it, timetables, schedules, papers, probably homework too. TK likes the place immediately, it’s so homey while also a little messy which makes TK wish Mateo and his dad weren’t clean freaks who can’t tolerate things lying around in the house. The only room they let be is TK’s and it’s always messy and cluttered and TK loves to be in there while it makes Mateo’s skin crawl and causes Owen to have an aneurysm on the few occasions he’s in there. Carlos walks up to his mother, kisses her cheek, she’s short, black curly hair in a messy bun on top of her head and smiles. TK gives Lola a high five and she rolls her eyes but does slap his hand, giggling like it’s the most ridiculous thing she’s ever done, while also looking slightly delighted. 

“Mami, this is TK.” The woman puts some salt in the stew, stirs it and then turns. TK tries not to be awkward but he suddenly doesn’t know what to do with his hands now that her attention is on him.

“TK, it’s nice to meet you.” She wipes her hands off the kitchen towel and then comes forward. TK is expecting her to take his hand but she snorts and pulls him into a tight hug instead. The air goes out of him for a moment and lamely he puts his arms around the small woman, while Carlos laughs into his hand. TK glares without heat.

“It’s nice to meet you Mrs. Reyes.” She steps back and rolls her eyes. 

“No, no, no Mrs. Reyes in my own house. Here I am Maria.”

“Nice to meet you Maria.” He corrects. 

“It is nice to meet you too TK.” She has a beautifully uplifting smile, a little like Carlos’, only brighter. It lights up her whole face and it’s a little infectious, TK can feel the corner of his mouth lift to match hers. 

“Can we eat now? I am hungry.” Lola interrupts them and Maria clicks her tongue at her and says something in Spanish. When Owen and Mateo took Spanish together, Owen because he felt it was essential he learnt it when he adopted Mateo, and Mateo because Owen didn’t want it to go to waste when his parents died and he had no relatives in the country, TK had regretfully opted out. He was a stupid child, he will admit as much, because it means that now when he’s taking Spanish in school he’s terrible at it. And bribing Mateo to do homework for him has proven to never work out in his favour. Owen and Mateo can hold conversations in the house he doesn’t understand which makes him feel left out and it adds another unbreachable layer to his and Mateo’s relationship that bugs him sometimes. Being. well friends with Carlos adds just another reason to the list of why he wishes he knew it.

“No speaking Spanish when we have guests.” Carlos says.

“Oh, no, don’t stop on my account.” He reassures them when they switch to English. “It’s fine, I have a brother who speaks it as well.”

“Oh?” Maria asks, interested as Lola rolls his eyes now behind her mother’s back and glares at Carlos forcing him to help her set the rest of the table up. 

“Adoptive brother.” TK corrects for Maria’s benefit. “His parents died in a fire when we lived in New York so my dad decided to adopt him. He was the first on sight when it happened and couldn’t leave him to foster care.”

“Owen Strand correct?”

“Yes that’s the man.” She smiles cheekily.

“Yes I know him, always liked him. What’s your brother’s name?”

“Mateo.”

“Very nice, and you don’t speak Spanish?”

“Regretfully no.” He confesses, hopes that doesn’t make him sound like the idiot he is.

“Well all my three children went through a period of time where they refused to speak Spanish in this house. It’s been the reason for many arguments I can assure you. Though Carlos was by far the easiest to convince. Isabella, my oldest, she gave us hell for it.”

“And Lola?”

“Well she has Carlos as an influence, and he’s a great brother to her, she takes after him in many regards.” 

“I see.” He can’t help but smile, eyes flitting to the two of them in the kitchen, laughing as they turn the stove off, shoving each other gently. There’s something comforting about it, heartwarming, and for all their differences and fights, TK is so grateful to have Mateo in his life to share moments with. 

“Are you an only child? Apart from Mateo?”

“I am yes.”

“And your mother?”

“Mom!” Carlos interrupts, annoyed at her for asking and a look of regret flashes across Maria’s face.

“Oh, I’m sorry TK, that was inconsiderate of me.” The room grows silent with Carlos glaring at his mother, Lola looking between all three of them and TK just shrugs.

“Don’t worry, it’s okay. It happened a long time ago and I’m okay with it.” He reassures her, smiles because he means it. TK can handle a question asked out of curiosity, he isn’t the sensitive and hurt child he once was. 

“I’m sorry for asking and I’m sorry she left, it leaves a hole in you that’s hard to fill.” Carlos groans, facepalms making TK chuckle, but he grows serious again when he looks back at Maria.

“It does yes, but my dad’s done a good job.” 

“Yes, of course, that was not what I was implying, single parents are heroes in my opinion. I just meant -” And she blushes and TK takes her fidgeting hand in his and squeezes.

“I know what you meant. And I agree single parents are heroes. You’d know, you did a good job too.” She beams, looks relieved and she gently caresses his cheek, tears in her eyes before she blinks them away, and moves, the lovely moment now broken. She grabs the massive pot out of Carlos’ hands and brings it to the table.

“Okay, let’s eat.”

The smell is absolutely amazing and TK hasn’t realised how hungry he is until the massive pot is put down in front of him. Carlos brings the rice over and a can of water to go with as they sit down, conversation running freely and easily between them. 

The chili verde TK learns that the stew is called, is delicious and he might have to bring Mateo over for recipes as he’s been saying that he needs new ones, he’s sure Maria Reyes could teach him a lot. 

The dinner is lovely, Lola is confident and sassy, Carlos more quiet but quick to make the others laugh, while Maria is a warm presence of love to round it all off. Once it is over there’s ice cream for desert and then after that, a lot later, when TK insists he can help with the dishes but has been absolutely refused to do so by Maria, he has a cup of tea sitting at the kitchen island while Carlos cleans everything away, Maria upstairs having forced Lola to go to bed.

“I’m sorry about what my mom said to you earlier, sometimes she doesn’t have a filter.” Carlos interrupts, apologetic as he puts a plate away. TK gets up and hands him his empty mug, Carlos taking it off him easily.

“No, no, it’s fine, you know it’s actually not too bad talking about it, about her. It’s good for me I think.” Carlos smiles and nods, goes back to the task at hand while TK starts to wander the kitchen, sees the fridge is full of magnets from different places around the world, the photos of Lola and Carlos, Isabella at her graduation who is a copy of their mother, shop coupons and offers on discount deals for sports wear. He jumps up on the counter, sits there comfortably, debating with himself whether to ask or not. Eventually he caves, the comfortable atmosphere between them and the beautiful house full of love getting to him. 

“Is it weird not having your dad around?” Carlos is quiet for a while by the dishwasher, until he comes closer and steps up to TK’s side, looks thoughtful, shrugging, eyes looking around the room.

“It’s not as weird as it used to be. But sometimes I walk around the house and see he’s not in any of the new photos we put up around. And then I really miss him, all the things he didn’t get to experience and see, Isabella’s graduation, all the games I keep winning, Lola becoming the best in her class in maths, she’s really clever, and that hurts. I don’t like thinking about my mother being alone, and yeah sometimes it’s a lot to think about him being gone, and some days I don’t think about it all and that makes me feel guilty.” 

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah I know.” Carlos gives him a fleeting smile, a little downcast but not as sad as before. “And you, do you miss your mom?” TK shrugs.

“I don’t know...I am so used to not having her around that it’s hard to sometimes even realise I had her to begin with. She has a new life, I have a new life and I don’t want to think about all the things she does with her new family. Sometimes I forget there was a time where there wasn’t just me, Mateo and my dad. But yeah it makes me feel guilty too.” 

“Yeah I mean I get it.” Carlos’ sincere voice, open and honest eyes and TK believes him, because why would he not.

“I haven’t told anyone about my mother before, not like this. It’s not something we talk about at home a lot.”

“It makes sense to me, I get you, what you mean.” TK bitingly smiles, and nods.

“Yeah, I feel like you do.” He whispers, eyes flitting up to Carlos who smiles back.

“It’s nice having someone to talk to about all these things.”

“Yeah.” TK agrees. “For someone so full of themselves, you’re a pretty good listener.” Carlos snorts, it turns into laughter and he rolls his eyes, pushes at TK gently who bites down his own threatening laughter.

TK is learning that there’s nothing quite in this world that beats being with Carlos like this, laughing together, talking, feeling at ease, like he’s understood and seen in ways he isn’t normally except when he is with him.

And it’s getting harder and harder for TK to pretend that the relationship is fake, because when they exist just the two of them it feels real. 

Fucking hell.

“You’re a good listener too.” Carlos whispers, letting him in on a secret.

“Right back at you.” 

Carlos smiles beautifully. 

There’s silence between them, but not an awkward one, no, this is one is similar to the ones he can only really share with Mateo, when they can exist together without filling the space with words, and this, him and Carlos right now feel like that too, it’s still between two people who can exist without the noise around them to distract from everything going on on the inside. It’s making TK feel both vulnerable and safe at the same time, two strongly contradictory emotions battling for dominance. But Carlos looks at him, softly, and safety wins and for a moment TK dares to be a little brave.

“I like hanging out with you.” Carlos eyes widen before he beams, chuckles a little shyly which is absolutely adorable. 

“Me too, I like hanging out with you too. You’re cool.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that, that’s a bit of a stretch.” Carlos rolls his eyes.

“No, no, no more of this TK putting himself down crap you got going, own it man, you’re awesome.” He says, a little worked up and TK’s goddamn treacherous heart does a flip because that’s a compliment, an honest one despite it being kind of dude bro like. He blushes but nods. 

“Okay, fine, for tonight I won’t.”

“Good, honestly, good.”

“You’re very caring about this particular problem it seems.” Yes, TK has issues with compliments and his tactic for evading emotion in his personal life is to joke it away.

“I don’t like it when good people are hard on themselves. It’s not very becoming of you.” He adds with a terrible english accent that makes TK snort in a very unbecoming way.

“ ‘There is a stubbornness about me that can never be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.’ ”

“Oh, oh, I see how it is, you quoting Pride and Prejudice at me like I’m some dumb moron. I see how it is. ‘My good opinion once lost is lost forever.’ ” He smirks and TK’s jaw is on the floor in surprise as he stutters, trying to get his bearings together.

Fucking hell. If TK’s had ideas about romantic fantasies, the ones revolving around quoting goddamn Pride and Prejudice at each other have been at the top. 

He’s speechless.

“ ‘I could easily forgive his pride and goddamn arrogance had it not mortified me.’ ” He gets out as Carlos laughs.

“That’s not how the quote goes.”

“It’s close enough to the point I’m trying to make, Pride and Prejudice, who are you?”

“Someone full of surprises.”

“Clearly, back to the point, Pride and Prejudice?” Carlos shrugs.

“You tried getting away quoting one of the most romantic books in history, that might I add has one hell of a film with Keira Knightley and Matthew McFayden, of course I’m not going to let that get over my head.” TK shakes his head, quite literally taken by storm of the statement.

“I mean if I tried quoting it at Mateo he would call me a dork.”

“Yes well Mateo clearly doesn’t have the intellectual streak both you and me clearly possess.”

“You’re…”

“Unbelievable, yes that’s what he said.” 

“Ew, you ruined it now.” He groans, trying to hide his laughter.

“Nah you like it.” TK just shakes his head, but on the inside everything feels like it’s been rearranged, his heart doing back flips in there out of, well something TK doesn’t know what is. But it makes him feel happy, he knows that much. 

“Sure.” Carlos gives him a knowing look, but says nothing other than looking a little smug. TK’s had a nice evening, and for that reason and that reason only, he’ll let Carlos get away with it, just this once. 

He lets out a yawn and Carlos looks at the clock above the table, his eyes widening when he realises it’s 11.

“Wow, it’s late, I’ll drive you home.”

“Yeah sure.” 

When they get to the door Maria comes downstairs, engulfs TK into another tight hug.

“Come by any time.” She holds his face in her gentle hands for a moment, smiling knowingly and TK nods, not sure what to say.

“Good, drive safe cariño. Good night TK.” She waves them off as they run to the car, the late autumn weather cold at this time of night and the jacket TK wore earlier is too thin now. Carlos is just in a hoodie, he must be even colder. They sit for a moment or two, the both of them trying to get warm in the beamer before the heat starts to kick in, making the horrible cold develop into a comfortable atmosphere. 

“That’s better, good job baby.”

“Oh my god, don’t tell me you’re one of those dudes that talk to your car like it’s a person?”

“Don’t mind him Diego, he’s just jealous.” Carlos teases, caressing the steering wheel lovingly. 

“Ew.” Carlos shushes him, carsesses the car even more violently.

“I’ll have you know that this is in fact my baby, we’ve been through a lot, I bought it with my own money just after my dad died. It kind of became my safe haven where I could escape to when the house became too stifling with grief and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I used to come out here, get out on the road and blast music so loud it would drown out my thoughts. I sometimes took Lola too, once mami came as well and for a moment we were allowed to exist without the shadow of my father hanging around us. I didn’t have to be Carlos Reyes, star gay football player with a dead dad. Instead I could just be nobody here.”

Okay, now TK feels like an asshole and he looks away in shame, feels it burn hot in his stomach, because that’s… well, that TK can really relate to.

“I feel that way with books.” He admits. “It’s an escape.” Carlos studies him curiously and nods.

“Yeah, we all need those from time to time.”

“We do yeah.”

“Also, sorry I didn’t mean to make you feel bad about Diego.” He jokes, eyes alive, looking cheeky.

“Why Diego?”

“Well I toyed with Frida too for a while but then Diego felt more fitting…”

“What, like Diego Rivera?”

“Yes, but obviously he totally overshadowed his much more interesting wife Frida Kahlo and I thought well I can’t name one of my country’s most prominent feminist painters after a car, that felt disingenuous disengious, so I decided on Diego instead, because it’s after all a car.” 

“You’re full of contradictions.” He laughs. “But it’s nice to meet you.” He indulges Carlos’ and strokes hand across the dashboard. “Thanks for getting me to school safely and taking such good care of Carlos.” He greets and Carlos beams, laughs after a while at the ridiculousness of it but TK likes it. It’s goofy and beautiful at the same time. 

“Diego says thank you, and now he wishes to drive you home in one piece yet again.”

“Lead the way Diego.” He laughs. Carlos starts the car and they are off. 

“Your mother is sweet.”

“My mother is insane, but yes she is lovely.”

“Doesn’t everybody think their parents are insane?”

“Probably.”

“Honestly mine is an overworking health and fitness freak that will actually kill you if you take any of his beauty or face products. Like actually murder you. He grounded me and Mateo once for it.”

“For real?”

“Yes, and then he calmed down and came and apologized and said we were ungrounded.”

“How old were you?”

“We were 12 I think.”

“Okay that is insane.”

“Tell me about it.” He mutters.

“Well my mother once, and this was purposely, walked in on me and a boy hooking up, holding the bible and a cross chanting religious nonsense in a mix of Spanish and English and scared him off.” TK bursts out laughing.

“Oh my god, that’s… I don’t even know what to say. Either genius or absolutely terrifying.”

“Yes I know and my mother isn’t exactly the religious kind. At least not to that degree.”

“Honestly, I’ve made up my mind, it’s incredible, I’m so going to do that to my kids.” Carlos looks at him, a look of something passing over his features, and TK’s stomach does a flip. He wants Carlos to keep looking at him that way, only they are driving, so his attention needs to be on the road, and his eyes drift away leaving TK cold. Carlos clears his throat. 

“Yes, I’m not telling her that though, wouldn’t want her to… do it again I guess.” He shrugs, awkwardly, like the insinuation it would happen again is reminding him of something that makes him unhappy. TK ignores it, choosing instead to focus on the lovely evening they have had together. 

They get to TK’s house too soon for his liking and a part of him wants to immediately ask Carlos when they can hang out just the two of them again, but he doesn’t want to sound over excited either so he shuts his mouth.

“Here we are…” Carlos comments and TK nods.

“Yeah...I had a good time tonight, it was...nice.” Carlos chuckles.

“It was, nice, as you put it, I had a good time too. Let’s do it sometime soon again, yeah?”

“Yeah.” He agrees, opens his mouth to say something more, only for the both of them to snap around at the sound of something breaking and a loud crash. TK’s eyes widen, outside of his house there are three other cars parked around, the whole street vibrating with the music coming from inside where people are dancing and laughing. TK’s out of the car before Carlos has the time to stop him.

“MATEO!” He shouts, barely even heard because of the music. “I am going to fucking murder you.” Carlos catches up.

“Hey, okay maybe not shout bloody murder on the street.” TK whirls around, jabs a finger aggressively, maybe a tad too much as Carlos winces and TK feels pain shoot up his finger at connecting with Carlo’s iron strong stomach of taut muscle and he gives him an apologetic look before he continues his rant.

“No, I am going to murder him Carlos, he’s thrown a party! The one goddamn thing he was asked not to do. Fuck.” He turns around, jogs up the the rest of the way and throws the door up, only to be met by a drunk teenager from school, stumbling out, barely missing TK because Carlos is there and pulls him gently to the side, before the guy throws up all over the porch, the smell of it making TK gag.

“As I said, murder it is.” TK adds angrily.

“Yeah, yeah. I see your point.” Carlos lets go of his arm and together they sidestep the puke and walk into the house. 

Inside it’s a mess, they have to push through the sea of bodies around them that are all dancing and singing, the floor sticky with alcohol, the air reeking of sweat. In a corner he sees Paul talking to Lily, smiles sweet and heads close together, whispering, lost to the utter chaos around them. 

“Mateo?!” He roars, no one hearing him. His eyes widen when they get into the kitchen, where on the kitchen counters and islands Mateo is shirtless with Iris and Marjan, coke bottle in hand, beside him dancing and jumping up and down, people cheering him on from all around. 

What the fuck.

Mateo’s eyes widen when he spots TK though, a look mixing with fright and guilt passing along his features before he gulps, and slows down his dancing, the plastic mug he’s holding spilling sticky alcohol down his pant leg and onto the floor, barely missing TK.

“I am going to murder you!”

“What?? I can’t hear you.” Mateo shouts even louder.

“I am going to kill you!”

“I still can’t hear you, but I’m assuming you’re saying you’re going to kill me?”

“YES!” He mimics getting his throat slit and Mateo looks like he’s gotten the message loud and clear. Beside him someone greets Carlos drunkenly and Carlos says hi back, a look of awkwardness on his face but politely smiles and listens to the guy anyway.

“Get down!” Mateo nods and does as he’s been told, stumbles once on the ground, clearly very drunk as Iris and Miriam take over his spot, dancing and screaming together, barely noticing he’s gone. 

“What the fuck Mateo?!” He demands.

“Okay, so like I invited a few people, but then more and more turned up, I don’t know how it happened.” He defends, his words slightly stuttered out drunkenly, but he must be apprenhensive of TK’s anger because his eyes a clear and alert, very aware of the fuck up he’s caused. 

“Dad’s going to kill you if I don’t get to it first.”

“Well…” Mateo looks around, shrugs. “Maybe he doesn’t need to find out.”

“Find out? This whole place is a mess, when did you think you’d have the time to clean it up?”

“Well, before he came home from his shift.”

“Which is in like 3 hours might I add.” Mateo’s eyes widen at the realisation and he looks around himself like he’s seeing it for the first time. 

“Erm guys.” Carlos interrupts, points to a group of people that’s trying to move the couch. TK’s already moving, waving and shouting.

“Hey, stop, what the fuck, put it down.” The people seem to not hear him and TK wants to scream in frustration. Carlos comes to the rescue though, somehow managing to talk them down from it and they put the couch down, scrambling drunkenly away as TK and Carlos move together to put it right, picking up the cushions that ended up on the floor. 

“Thanks.” He says and Carlos gives him a nod. He sees people come down from upstairs and he wants to die.

“Oh my god no…” He whispers in horror and starts pushing people out of the way to get up. 

Carlos follows behind him, struggling to keep up with TK’s pace who runs it up as fast as he can in trepidation. When he gets to his room he’s almost scared to push the door open, but the thought of anyone being in there outweighs any hesitation he has so he opens it. It seems to have been left mostly untouched, he does a quick calculation of the stuff and sees everything is where he left it, everything apart from his bed.

Alex and some dude are on it, shirts off, making out. Carlos’ eyes widen and he turns his back in the doorway, not leaving but not looking, instead staring stubbornly at the floor.

“What the fuck?” TK screams without finesse and Alex and fucking goddamn Carl pull apart.

“Carl?” He says in disbelief.

“Hi TK.” He says, fixes his glasses and shrugs helplessly.

“Carl.” He greets again, a little kinder before he fixes his eyes on Alex who has a look of nonchalance and glee on his face. “Get the fuck out.” He says, angrily, not beating around the bush, not even with Alex. Alex just shrugs, doesn’t even make much effort to move or to find his shirt.

“Geez Tyler Kennedy, calm down, what got your panties in a twist?” He says, the fucking asshole and TK sees black, the viscious reply on his tongue close to escpaing would it not be for Carlos, gently placing his hand on his shoulder, slowly shaking his head. TK breathes through his nose, trying to summon the patience of a saint.

“Get out.” He says, smiles politely while his eyes convey that he wants to murder Alex. Alex rolls his eyes, pulls at Carl’s hand and when he passes Carlos he teasingly strokes his hand down Carlos’ arm, sending him a dirty look that makes TK’s blood fucking boil and Carlos to freezes where he is.

“Sorry TK.” Carl says, sounding at least genuinely apologetic, before the door shuts, plunging TK and Carlos into an awkward silence. For some reason TK is furious at Alex, not for being in his room which feels very much like a purposeful violation of any boundary they’ve had, as well as a deep invasion of his privacy. But what’s worse is Carlos’ fucking reaction to the whole thing, first not able to even look at the scene out of pain and then goddamn freezing up when Alex had riled him up. He wants to scream at Carlos that Alex is playing him and that he doesn’t give a shit about him. When it’s just the two of them Carlos exhales slowly, goes to sit down at TK’s desk, distractedly wobbling the head of his Wonder Woman bobblehead figure standing there. 

The music is still loud and it’s nearing 12 and TK is exhausted and tired and angry and stressed and he doesn’t know what to do. All he knows is that he wants everyone out of the house, kind of including Carlos, who seems to have pulled himself together by then.

“Sorry.” Carlos says and TK shrugs, averts his eyes and starts looking for his phone.

“Don’t be, none of this is your fault.”

“No, but the whole Alex thing, it makes me feel responsible.”

TK rolls his eyes.

“It’s not, the world does not revolve around you and Alex’s had it out for me way before he broke up with you.” He snaps, regrets it immediately when Carlos looks hurt and he pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration at himself.

“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

Carlos studies his face, shrugs, but he looks less hurt than he did a minute ago so TK feels it’s safe to go back to finding his phone.

“Who are you calling?”

“A family friend.” He sighs and dials one of the numbers he had one speed dials. It rings for so long that TK thinks no one is going to pick up.

“Ryder’s resident.” Grace says, tired, like TK’s woken her up and a stab of guilt flashes through him.

“Erm hi Grace, it’s TK.”

“TK, honey hi, what’s up?” And she immediately sounds more awake and worried. 

“Yeah something’s come up, is Judd in? Could I maybe speak with him?”

“Yes, yes of course. Wait a mo.” He hears the ruffling of sheets as she moves around, the sound of Judd’s annoyed grunting and it’s not exactly making TK feel better.

“Kid?” Judd’s tired but stern voice cuts through and TK gulps.

“Hi Judd, I need your help, something’s come up.”

…….

They wait outside and it takes Judd and Grace 20 minutes before they show up. By that time Mateo’s also started to sober up, alternating between picking up all the bottles he can find and frantically scrubbing each surface he comes in contact with, something that is pointless as people are still drunk and unaware of anything going on. Judd is a cloud of contained fury and Grace behind him, no nonsense attitude present but with a sweet smile as she greets TK by the door. Judd only grunts as a greeting, pushes the door open and marches straight inside and up to the speaker, turning it off. The rooms grow silent as people look around in bewilderment at the disruption. 

“I don’t care which one of you this stupidly expensive speaker belongs to, but if you haven’t cleared out of this house in ten seconds I am smashing it to the ground and then I am calling the police so they can arrest anyone who is underaged and drinking, am I making myself clear?”

The room goes deadly silent, everyone shocked speechless by the big and scary looking man threatening them with so many things at once. The boos come next, but people start to move at least.

“Yeah, yeah, keep moving.” Judd ignores them. A girl comes up to him, Annie, TK recognises her from Spanish, and gives him an apologetic but brave look as she asks if she could kindly have the speaker back and Judd glares but hands it to her and she hurries after her friends. Finally the house is blessedly silent as the majority of the people leave and the music has been killed. 

Carlos, Paul and Miriam are still here, all of them except for Carlos standing a bit awkwardly to the side, having been what TK hopes is shamed into silence, all apart from Iris who looks like her usually aloof self, clueless, poking at something that’s stuck under her fingernail, not seemingly totally aware what is going on. Carlos stands by his side and Mateo is hiding behind Grace who looks something between cross and highly amused.

“Now.” Judd turns to them and yep he can be terrifying when he wants to be. “Who wants to tell me what’s happened here?” None of them speak and Mateo steps even further back behind Grace’s back. 

“It’s all Mateo’s fault.” TK eventually blurts out, not caring that he’s putting Mateo under the firing line. Judd looks at Grace, well he looks at Mateo but Grace is standing in his line of sight and Grace sighs, steps aside and pushes Mateo out in front of her. He looks down, ears red in shame and TK feels a little bad, but only a little, because the image of Alex on his bed making out with Carl and Carlos’ visual reaction to it all destroys the tiny bit of empathy he has for Mateo at the moment. 

“Okay, like I invited top ten people, then more and more turned up. I don’t know how and it got out of hand and I didn’t mean to, okay?” Mateo defends as Judd pinches the bridge of his nose that says that all he wants is to sleep so he can get up on time for his shift tomorrow, rather than deal with a bunch of messy teenagers. Mateo’s face almost matches the pink tank top he’s wearing, which is obviously not his, but it’s better than him drunkenly stumbling around without a shirt so.

“Oh my god…” He grumbles. “Well it got out of hand, why didn’t you call anyone?”

“I might have gotten a little too drunk by then, Iris forced me to down hot shots she had made.” Iris smirks, doesn’t look guilty at all.

“Ah it was epic.”

“Iris, shut up.” Carlos hisses and all eyes turn to his, Judd’s moving between Iris and him until they seem to settle on Carlos, zooming in on the close distance he’s keeping to TK.

“Who are you?” He asks, not totally unfriendly, but not exactly friendly either and both Carlos and him start to stutter, awkwardly looking between each other and Judd, Grace hiding her delighted laughter behind her hand.

Fuck.

Mateo seems relieved that the attention has been moved away from him while Paul is sending him slightly concerned looks and TK would want nothing more than for the floor to swallow him whole. 

“Erm…” Judd looks impatient and TK swallows the ball of anxiety in his throat down. “His name is Carlos...He’s my boyfriend.” It takes a moment for Judd to realise what he’s been told, his face moving from confusion to elation, a smile breaking across his face.

“Ha, kid, no way, congrats.” And then he’s pulled into Judd’s massive arms, feels slightly disgruntled by the show of affection, but very touched too. He steps up close to Carlos, looks him over.

“Football player?” Carlos nods, a little uncertain.

“Me too kid.” He laughs and puts his hand forward for Carlos to take. He only hesitates a moment before he smiles, a little uncertain as Judd shakes it. “Also you hurt TK and I’m coming for you.” He warns, Carlos’ hand still in his as Carlos’ eyes widen, smile falling away, nodding his head frantically.

“Y-yes, of course that would never happen.” Carlos tries to reassure. Grace snorts, rolls her eyes and swats Judd’s hand away.

“He does not mean that Carlos, don’t worry. I’m Grace, Judd’s better half.” She winks and takes his hand in his, Carlos shaking it back a little clumsily, dumbstruck and it’s surprising to TK to see Carlos so completely rendered dumbfounded, revealing yet another layer of him. 

“Nice to meet you Grace.” He gets out and Grace smirks. 

“Now.” Judd interrupts and Mateo snaps his head up again, readying himself for what’s to come.

“Someone is going to have to call Owen, TK would you rather clean or call your dad?”

“Erm, I’m cleaning, Mateo will be the one owning up to this whole mess.” He levels Mateo with a look, and he gulps but nods and starts looking for his phone, not arguing.

“Perfect.” Judd says when Mateo leaves the room to go face the gallows. Owen very rarely gets angry at them anymore, he gets disappointed and talks to them in a calm and unattached way, which is guiltrip to be on the receiving end of. But this situation, having a party in a house Owen actually adores and spent most of his time perfecting, renovating, painting, furnishing, well it has the motivation to piss him right off. TK really doesn’t envy Mateo this. 

“Now, you two.” He points at Paul and Marjan who have remained unusually quiet this whole evening. TK hopes they feel bad and he’s going to think out a perfectly fitting punishment for the two of them later on, but when Judd looks at them, they stand up straighter, listening to every word. 

“You get the disinfectant, and a bucket with cloths to clean every surface.” They scramble away and Judd nods satisfied. 

“Carlos, TK, a mop and the vacuum cleaner, get started.” They nod, Carlos following TK as gets the stuff out of the cupboard behind the study. 

“You know you don’t have to stay, you can go home if you want.” TK offers as Carlos hands him the vacuum cleaner hanging neatly on the back of the door. 

“Nah, it’s okay, the more the merrier, it will be much quicker this way, and then we can go to sleep.” The We sends TK’s mind reeling and he’s sure Carlos means nothing by it but to TK it feels like he means them as an item and he might need to go splash some water on his face because of the insinuations of that statement. Carlos starts looking for a mop, completely unaware of what he’s done to him. 

“Okay.” He hopes his voice doesn’t shake as he moves aside the ironing board to show Carlos where it is. 

With all eight of them helping the cleaning process goes pretty quickly. Grace loads and unloads the dishwasher, washing glasses and plates while Judd helps with cleaning up the kitchen, Iris and Mateo collect broken and stray items, and putting glasses and bottles into small boxes they can recycle after, getting the place back to what it used to look like, and to everyone’s relief Mateo’s had the actual sense to load up on plastic cups and used the cheap wine glasses that Gwyneth left behind, they’ve been sitting at the back of a cupboard collecting dust for years so no one will be happier to see them gone than Owen, while Paul and Marjan disinfect and clean every surface they see, with a precision TK’s never seen them use before, but at least it’s getting clean, while he hoovers and Carlos mops the floor. TK’s never much been a fan of cleaning, but the smell that starts to fill the air, as the windows are opened up, disinfection and cleaning bottles are used and sprayed, the house finally begins to feel like itself again. 

When TK is done with downstairs area he vacuums the upstairs which to his great goddamn relief seems to have actually been left mostly alone, apart from his room of course. He goes into his dad’s room, finds it to be locked and then starts to hoover his own one. When he’s done he leaves the vacuum outside of Mateo’s door, he will have to clean his room himself. 

He goes downstairs to get the bucket and cloths from Marjan and Paul, the place mostly now back to normal when Owen opens the door, the whole house freezing where they are. He looks tired, frowning as he steps inside. TK usually doesn’t let anger go quickly, but even he has enough sympathy now to feel a little bad for Mateo right now. Despite what people may think, he does have Mateo’s back 100%, it’s just some unbreakable sibling code, the only one actually allowed to be mean or put their sibling in place is you, no one else, not even your dad. 

“Cap.” Judd greets, mouth around a donut with pink frosting he’s stolen from a box someone’s left behind. 

“Judd, Grace. Thank you very much for coming to the rescue of my very obvious failure as a parent.” He greets him and Mateo winces. The door opens again and Michelle Blake enters, uniform still on and a murderous expression on her face. For the first time this evening Iris actually look a little scared and she gulps when Michelle meets her eyes. 

“Iris….” Michelle says, crossing her arms. “Owen, this is clearly more my sister’s doing than it is Mateo’s. I know her.”

“I only made him hotshots.” She defends. “And fine, I might have put it on snapchat that Mateo had a party, but I didn’t exactly think anyone was going to show up, Mateo isn’t that popular.” Mateo looks hurt by the confession, Owen confused by everything seemingly moving at a too rapid speed for his brain to process everything that is going on while Michelle shakes his head, obviously disappointed. 

“You were the one that texted everyone?” Mateo asks and Iris shrugs.

“Well yeah…”

“That would explain why so many people suddenly showed up.” Marjan pipes up unhelpfully from the corner and TK glares at her to shut up. 

“I’m sorry you were dragged out of bed, I know you have an early shift tomorrow morning. I can reschedule it for the afternoon or evening if you would prefer it?” Owen offers Judd who shrugs.

“The only ones I’d get dragged out of bed for is Grace and your family Owen, and it’s not the first time I’ll have a bad night’s sleep before a shift. It’s okay.” He reassures and Grace sends him a secret private little smile. TK doesn’t have a lot of experience in healthy functioning adult relationships to model his own ones after. When Gwyneth and Owen’s relationship fell apart Owen never found anyone new. He’s been single for most of TK’s life, including the occasional hookups on the side that he’s had, and tried to hide which had worked well enough until Mateo and TK got older and understood what he was really up to. But none of his relationships ever lasted long. It wasn’t until Judd and Grace became a fixed point in their lives that TK really understood what mutual love and respect between a couple looked like. TK can’t wait until they have kids of their own, he’s looking forward to babysitting and watching Judd’s hard exterior melt away when he’s met with a baby’s puppy dog eyes on the other end. It’s going to be great. 

“Okay, thank you nonetheless. You didn’t have to stay and clean though.”

“Well I came because TK called and needed help with getting all the stuck up teens out, which I took a lot of pleasure in doing, but it didn’t feel right to leave them all here in this mess. Don’t worry, we made Mateo clean up all the vomit.”

“Oh god, vomit? Do I even want to know?” Owen pales.

“Most of it was outside.”

“At least there’s that.”

“Well, I’m driving you home Iris.” She sulks but nods, realising it’s a losing battle arguing with Michelle. She sends Mateo an apologetic shrug and leaves through the front door Michelle holds open. 

“See you tomorrow Owen and I am really sorry about this.” Owen pats her arm, shrugging.

“It’s okay, see you.”

“Marjan, Paul me and Grace will drive you home, get your stuff we’re leaving.” Judd ruffles Mateo’s hair on the way out, whispering what looks to be encouragements to Mateo whose lip twitches a little, before they drag a very sorry Paul and Marjan out the room who says that they will make it up to Owen who just waves them off, too tired to really care. That leaves Mateo, him, Carlos and Owen alone, an awkward silence filling up the space. TK gulps.

“Me and Carlos will clean the rest of my room up.” He announces, drags Carlos up the stairs with him to get away from the two of them and closes the door and puts on music on a loud volume to drown out the argument that’s about to kick off downstairs. 

Carlos hovers a little awkwardly by the door.

“You think Mateo is going to be okay?” TK shrugs.

“He’ll be fine, they will shout and both steam in their anger for a little while and then move on.”

“That easy huh?”

“They’re similar in their anger, they usually solve stuff pretty quickly. And knowing my dad he was way more of a troublemaker than what either I and Mateo are so I think he’ll be fine.”

“He has a really good disappointed face.”

“Tell me about it…” TK chuckles. He walks over and starts to open up all the windows in his room, clearing the air out. He throws an air freshener to Carlos who catches it easily enough.

“Get spraying.” Carlos laughingly complies while TK starts stripping the bed, throwing all the dirty linens into a pile on the floor. 

They make pretty good on time cleaning the room out just the two of them and after a while TK is satisfied, feels his desecrated room begin to take the shape of sacred hideout again that he decides to call it a night. It’s already after 2am and TK is beginning to feel like a zombie’s eaten his brain, sluggishness and tiredness battling over the part of his brain that wants to stay awake with Carlos. Carlos curiously starts to wander the room, smiling to himself when he sees something he must like.

“Why do you have two desks?”

“Oh, well one is for school work and anything else really. The other is for art and drawings. It tends to get really messy and cluttered when I do it so I try to keep it separated from the rest.”

“Ah, yes that makes sense. Can I see any of your art?” He asks curiously and for a moment TK wants to deny him, the only one that he’s really ever shown his art to is Mateo, not even Paul or Marjan have been allowed to see any of the pieces he really values. But it’s goddamn Carlos and he looks at TK in a way which makes it impossible for him to deny him, the hopefulness and curiosity a little too much for him. 

He nods wordlessly but encouragingly and Carlos beams as he walks over to the desk containing pencils, notebooks, paper everywhere, drawing tools and a light. 

“Can I?” He asks carefully, his hand hovering over a notebook. 

“Yeah go ahead.” Gently Carlos reaches for the sketchbook, his hand clutching the book in a gentle way, like it’s precious and needs to be handled carefully. For fuck’s sake TK thinks, it’s just hands, he shakes his head trying to focus back onto reality.

Carlos has opened the book and his eyes widen when he sees the drawings take form on each page. TK doesn’t think they are that special, just some fun doodles he’s made.

“Wow, this is great!” TK blushes at the praise, Carlos eyes flitting to his excitedly and in amazement. TK shrugs.

“Thanks.”

“Are you going to make it into a comic strip or something? There’s so much story here, I love the style.” He continues rambling and TK blushes harder.

“Yeah, the story is in development I guess.”

“Awesome!” TK smiles at Carlos infectious happiness, can’t really help it as Carlos flips through them.

“Ooooh, I have an idea.”

“What?”

“You should draw me!” TK almost trips over himself, something only he can really manage to do from standing still, but Carlos looks riveted by this very idea while TK feels a little like it might be the worst idea someone ever had.

“I mean...I don’t think I could do you justice...” It’s meant to be a joke, only it isn’t and he probably misses by a mile because for a moment Carlos grows serious, his eyes searching TK’s face and TK’s slow to hide everything behind a joking demeanor, because whatever Carlos’s sees there makes his eyes go soft for a moment before he whispers.

“We all just want to be loved by someone in a way that makes sense to us.” TK doesn’t catch most of it and Carlos seems not to have realised what he’s even said.

“What?” Carlos shakes his head, flush high on his cheeks, looking put on the spot. But he clenches his teeth and seems determined not to be embarrassed by whatever he’s said. He shrugs.

“Just something my dad told me once, I didn’t really know what he meant by it then, but I think I’m beginning to understand.” TK nods, not sure what to say and Carlos shuffles his feet, looking a little embarrassed by the confession.

“He seemed like a good person.” TK offers, feels it’s a lame thing to say and would never quite be able to describe him but Carlos seems to appreciate it nonetheless which makes TK feel better.

“He was yes. Came to America with my mother when they were both 18, barely adults, but he wanted a better future for himself and his family.”

“What did he used to do?”

“He was an architect actually, got pretty successful actually after a few years.” Carlos continues looking through his drawings, a small smile playing at the corner of his lip, spurring TK’s questions on. 

“And you were close?” Carlos nods.

“Yeah, he was always much easier to talk to than my mother, so we were closer for sure.”

“I’m very sorry for your loss.” Carlos nods. “He sounds, well, pretty incredible.” Which sounds lame but TK doesn’t have the words to make it sound like he sees how much he meant to him, but Carlos looks up, meets TK’s eyes and nods, smile growing brighter. 

“Yeah, yeah he was.”

Carlos puts the notebook down, continues walking around TK’s space. The strange thing is that it doesn’t feel like a violation of anything, it makes him feel a little vulnerable, sure, but Carlos takes to everything he finds out about TK with ease, like he’s longing to get to know him better, soaking up all the pieces of information he’s getting.

It feels a lot like being seen.

It should feel scary, TK always thought it would.

But the strongest emotion he can really describe as feeling right now is not fright, rather it’s relief and calmness, someone seeing you and liking that part of you that you keep hidden from most people. 

TK grabs the end of his bedpost, to steady himself against the overwhelming sense of doing something foolish. 

“Are you a Star Wars fan?”

“Huh?”

“A Star Wars fan?” Carlos laughs, points at the selection of bobblehead figures on one of the shelves and some of the books he has lined up. TK shrugs.

“My dad is the really big fan, but yeah we used to watch the films when we were little and then the obsession and fascination stuck. I also have a crush on Poe Dameron, what can I say?”

“Solid choice in terms of crush material. I like him too.” 

“The sequel films are pretty bad though.”

“Yeah, I think they had such great potential and then just fell short of all good things it could have done and chose to give all the story and depth to the nazi dude with daddy issues.” Carlos says passionately and TK laughs, agreeing with him so much.

“Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

“Can you imagine having seen a same sex interracial couple on screen in a blockbuster film? It would have been incredible.”

“Tell me about it…”

“I don’t think I will ever get over it, or forgive Disney for being absolute cowards.”

“Well, there is always fan fiction….” Carlos laughs, eyes lighting up immediately.

“Of course I should have known you were a fellow fic reader.”

“You too huh?”

“From time to time I have been known to dabble around on the archive.” TK laughs too, absolutely delighted. 

“You have so many layers.” Slips out of TK and his eyes widen but Carlos looks pleased by the admission as TK’s ears heat in embarrassment. He groans.

“I need to sleep.”

“Why? I’m liking this side to you.” Carlos teases.

“You like the compliments.”

“I like the truths.”

“How do you know I’m telling you the truth?” TK crosses his arms in front of him. Carlos smirks, shrugs nonchalantly.

“You have a tell. I see you.”

“What’s the tell.”

“I’m not saying.” TK huffs.

“Unfair…” Carlos just wriggles his eyebrows but doesn’t say anything and TK rolls his eyes. 

Carlos continues looking through his room comfortably, and there’s something about the image of Carlos walking around that strangely fits here in TK’s little safe haven, makes it feel wholesome and something inside of TK settles. 

TK feels his heartbeat fluttering inside of his chest and it’s becoming harder for TK to deny that Carlos’ pull on him is like gravity, he’s like a moth drawn to the flame, he’s gotten a taste of what spending time with Carlos’ is like and he’s growing obsessed with it. The whole feeling of elevation in his chest, how all problems seem to diminish when they are in the near vicinity of each other, how Carlos’ quick wit and cheeky humour can match TK’s own, how he can be both rendered speechless and feel absolutely alive in every way when they are together. 

There’s something simmering under the surface of this realisation, something a little dangerous but deeply enticing and honestly TK really doesn’t know what to do with all these feelings he suddenly has about everything, they feel so big he thinks they are going to swallow him whole. 

He feels, well so much, and so little at the same time. Like whatever is happening here isn’t loud and life altering. Well it’s altering something, but it’s on the inside rather on the outside, and it’s soft and sweet and something TK doesn’t quite know how to name.

For a long time he’s always thought that falling in love would be loud and be this massive unmistakable thing, that TK would feel it change him inside and out, and yet here he is, in his room with a boy he never wants to stop spending time with and TK doesn’t feel changed, and so the notion that he might need to reassess what falling in love would feel like should be more disconcerting that he feels it is at the moment. Because maybe, just maybe, falling in love is something that happens quietly, something that constantly rearranges itself to fit your life, and something that keeps creating itself over and over again.

TK shakes his head, lost in his wandering treacherous thought at 3am and tries to ground himself back into reality.

Everything is a mess inside of his head, and trying to sort through it proves harder than the first thought. 

The only thing he does know for a fact though is that he doesn’t want Carlos to leave.

“Do you want to stay?”

“Huh?” Carlos' eyes snap to his and his own eyes widen in horror at the words he just blurted out. He closes and opens his mouth a few times before he shrugs, looks down at his feet, not sure he will have the courage to ask Carlos again if he has to look him in the eyes.

“I mean… well it’s late and you shouldn’t drive if you’re tired, it’s much better to do it in the morning. I can give you statistics from Owen if you want about how many accidents that happen when people drive while they are tired, it’s a lot more common than you think and -”

“I’d rather just accept the offer.” Carlos bites his smile down, looking fondly at TK when he stops his rambling long enough to look up at Carlos.

“What?” He can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. Carlos laughs.

“I said that yes I’ll stay.”

Oh.

Oh, oh, oh oh oh.

Clearly TK hasn’t thought through the logistics of this because if Carlos’ is staying over he’s staying in TK’s own bed which is a very intimate thought he really isn’t ready to have at this time of the night. But the words have already been said and it’s too late to take them back now. So TK gulps down the nerves and tries to smile. Carlos snorts.

“You don’t look well.” He comments drily and TK lets out a surprised laugh.

“No, no, I just didn’t think you’d say yes.”

“As I’ve said, I’m a surprising man.”

You sure are TK agrees silently but decides just to nod, not thinking his voice will quite bear right now. 

“Well there are lots of spare toothbrushes in the bathroom you can choose from. My dad always stocks up on them in case there is an emergency.” He offers and Carlos nods.

“Where’s the bathroom?”

“Down the hall and then the room to the left.”

“Thanks.”

When Carlos leaves TK throws himself down on the bed in a mixture of panic and frustration. 

The thought that this will be the first time he shares a bed with someone that is not Mateo, Marjan or Paul is close to sending TK into a panic attack. He feels frustrated at himself and his obvious inability to act like a normal goddamn human being for once because lots of people share beds that are just friends without having an identity crisis over it, why can’t he just be like that too?

When Carlos comes back, about ten minutes later TK has calmed down significantly.

“That bathroom does have a lot of beauty products.” He sounds bewildered and TK laughs.

“Yep, most of it is my dad’s.”

“Crazy...but I have to say I admire the dedication. Also it seems to work, man you are blessed with good genes if you look like that when you are 50….? 55?”

“52.”

“Nice job.”

“Thanks I guess…” 

“Do you have an extra charger I could borrow?” Carlos asks like this isn’t even a big deal for him and he must have stayed over at lots of boys’ houses if he’s this calm about it. TK gulps but hides it by rifling through a messy drawer to find Carlos a charger.

“Here.”

“Thank you.”

TK realises they now have another problem.

What in the living hell is Carlos going to sleep in?

TK is much smaller than what he is, he will have nothing in his wardrobe that can fit the muscly dream man that Carlos is.

Well shit.

“Erm..”

“Yeah?” TK snaps his mouth close, blushes hard because how does he bring this up.

“Are you blushing?”

“No...no what makes you say that?” Carlos smiles knowingly but says nothing.

“Erm…” Carlos eyes snap back to him and he swallows. “I have nothing to offer you to sleep in.” He sheepishly says, runs a hand through his hair to distract from his inner turmoil.

“Oh…” Carlos says like he hasn’t even thought about that small issue and TK grimaces.

“I’ll just sleep like this.”

“With the jeans?” 

“Well without the jeans.” Carlos agrees and he’s so calm about everything that it feels ridiculous to TK that he’s freaking out over it. 

He starts to calm down but then Carlos moves to take the jeans off and TK squeaks and turns around, hastily grabbing a pair of pyjamas pants and rushes out the door and into the bathroom.

He really hasn’t thought this through.

He splashes cold water on his face, grabs the sink forcefully feeling his mind lose its reeling. 

He’s close to freaking out again, to vibrate out of skin from whatever it is that he’s feeling for Carlos.

Because, fuck, okay like Carlos is really attractive. Spirited and warm dark brown eyes, cheekbones and compelling beautiful lines that make up his face, that TK’s fingers itch to trace, to map out and remember what it would feel like under his palm. That one curl that refuses to lie like the rest of his hair, he’s intoxicating and when he looks at TK, eyes alive and endless in depth, it feels like a current goes through him, overwhelming him to the point where he doesn’t know whether to run in the opposite direction or see what would happen if he was to stay and push back against his teasing demeanor and smirks, what would Carlos do then?

But like TK is gay, Carlos is gay, it’s normal to feel attraction towards people who are hot, right? Right?!

TK groans, stops splashing cold water on his poor face and dries it. 

Okay, when he freaks out under normal circumstances, when it feels like his chest is about to cave in on itself and he’s going to stop breathing, he makes lists. Writes everything down to sort through the mess in his head to get some clarity and direction so it’s easier to see what needs to be done.

It hasn’t let him down before and it doesn’t now either.

-Put on night cream.  
-Brush teeth.  
-Put on pyjamas.  
-Go to bed.

The list is small but he can do it. 

He moisturises, brushes his teeth, puts his pyjamas on and then he sneaks back into his room.

Carlos is already in his bed, lights turn out except for the one on the nightstand, phone in hand texting with someone. For a moment TK freezes, his brain short circuiting because this, this is too much. He considers running back into the bathroom to splash more water on his face.

“Hi.” Carlos smiles, breaking him out of his daze and he shakes his head, gulps, but he starts to move towards the bed on shaky legs. He keeps his eyes on the sheet when he lifts the duvet, not wanting his eyes to stray when he gets in, feels Carlo’s heat even through the thin layer and the distance they have between them. 

It’s quiet between them, not awkwardly so, more like an anticipation in the air, the space between them charged. But TK feels he’s reached his capacity to act or even think today and the exhaustion washes over him in waves, making it difficult to even keep his eyes open any longer. Carlos seems to be in a similar state and when he closes his eyes for what is the third time TK thinks he might have already fallen asleep.

He turns the light off, plunging them into darkness.

“Good night.” He whispers.

“Good night.” Carlos lip twitches, and then breaks out into a small little private smile, meant just for the two of them.

TK closes his own eyes and falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, the biggest thank you to my cousin and beta Nat that read through this all yesterday evening... what a hero <3
> 
> Also I would just like to add this, NO disrespect to Gwyneth, I love Lisa Edelstein, it's just that I wrote this story way before we knew she was going to be a possible fixed point in TK's life.
> 
> I'm on tumblr too, beeexx.tumblr.com.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who has read and commented on this, it means more than you will ever know. Thank you to all of you <3

**Author's Note:**

> This is un'betad as all my regular friends are buuuusyyy at the moment and don't have the time, and I wrote this in like a day so no one would have had the time probably to just read 14K words. But I should probably get one for this story, any takers ahha?
> 
> I had fun with this, I hope you had too! Next part should be up soon, hopefully, thanks for reading <3


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